UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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IVAN     TURGENEV. 


fl'rontispiece. 


TWO    RUSSIAN 
REFORMERS 


IVAN  TURGENEV 
LEO    TOLSTOY 


BY 


J.  A.  T,  LLOYD 

a  (^  7  ^  7 


''.'Vi  i-'  \    i-'  '-^  ' 


NEW    YORK 

JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 

1911 


PBIMED  IN    GREAT    blUTAIN 


»  •     ,  •      •  •  < 


•        •       •     •        •  •  < 


•   •    •  •  •   •       • 


•         • 


•  ••     •    . 


•  •  •       . " 
•  •,«,••    •••• 

••••   ••   »•  •  * 


lJi\ 


-i-^ki-,ir« 


TWO  RUSSIAN  REFORMERS 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IVAN  TURGENEV II 

LEO  TOLSTOY      .     ...     .     .     .   219 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

IVAN  TURGENEV Frontisptece 

PAGE 
AVENUE    AT    SPASSKO^ S^ 

A    TYPICAL    ISBA lOI 

SPORT    IN    THE    STEPPES 135 

TURGENEV    IN    OLD    AGE  .......  169 

COUNT    LEO    TOLSTOY  235 

TOLSTOY'S   WORKROOM  .....••  269 

TOLSTOY   AT   WORK 3^3 


-'  My  one  desire  for  my  tomb  is  that  they  shall 
engrave  upon  it  what  my  book  has  accomplished 
for  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs." 

Ivan  Turgenev. 


TURGENEV 


II 


CHAPTER    I 

'J.  ^  ?  (p  7 

CHILDHOOD  is  only  too  often  a  bondage 
which  is  never  explained ;  but  the  child- 
hood of  genius,  a  martyrdom  though  it 
may  be,  not  infrequently  finds  eventual  ex- 
pression. This  interpretation,  however,  of  the 
vague  years  with*their  formless  misgivings  and 
regrets,  their  unreasoned  revolts,  their  gasps 
of  antipathy  and  thankfulness — all  this  is  usually 
toned  down  delicately  in  a  mirage  of  memory 
in  which  resentment  escapes  in  a  half-whimsical 
sigh  or  a  smile  of  forgiving  irony.  But  in  some 
very  rare  instances  the  dreams  of  early  youth 
penetrate  into  the  world  of  art  without  any 
such  softening  process  of  memory.  One  of  these 
exceptional  cases  is  the  childhood  of  Ivan  Tur- 
genev. 

Born  at  Orel  on  October  28,  1818,  Turgenev 
was  the  son  of  a  rich  landed  proprietor,  and  re- 
ceived at  Spasskoe,  his  mother's  property,  the 
usual  cosmopolitan  education  of  Russians  of  his 
class.  Here  Fraulein,  "  Misses,"  and  '*  Mammzell" 
instructed  him  in  their  respective  languages. 
Here,    too,  he  was   constantly   beaten,    and   ex- 

13 


V 


14  Two  Russian  Reformers 

perienced  in  all  its  bitterness  the  acrid  distress 
of  childhood.  Long  afterwards,  in  one  of  those 
projections  of  memory  almost  physical  in  their 
intensity,  he  was  to  picture  himself  as  "  drinking, 
with  a  kind  of  bitter  pleasure,  the  salt  water 
of  his  tears."  But  it  was  here,  too,  that  he 
breathed  in  those  unforgettable  impressions  of 
Russian  country  life  with  which  he  was  after- 
wards to  charm  and  to  astonish  Europe.  At 
Spasskoe  he  learned  to  become  a  sportsman, 
and  commenced  those  wandering  habits  which 
were  to  give  liberty,  through  his  "  Annals  of  a 
Sportsman,"  to  millions  of  human  beings.  His 
love  of  nature  was  at  this  time  almost  a  passion, 
and  he  has  told  us  that  in  the  evenings  he  would 
often  steal  out  by  himself  to  meet  and  to  embrace 
— a  lime-tree.  Over  and  over  again  in  his  novels 
he  returns  to  that  mysterious  Russian  garden 
in  which  there  seemed  to  ferment  the  drowsy, 
humming  life  of  all  the  summers  in  the  world. 
One  sees  him  escaping  to  the  solace  of  this 
haunted  garden,  a  lonely  boy,  spied  upon  by 
parasites  and  often  punished  with  malignant 
severity.  One  sees  him  becoming  involuntarily 
a  watcher,  as  though  he  had  been  born  a  con- 
noisseur of  souls.  For,  here  on  the  very  thres- 
liold  of  youth,  disillusion  has  come  to  him.  The 
difficult  relations  between  his  father  and  mother 
were  not  concealed  from  these  young,  questioning 
eyes.     Child  as  he  was,  he  had  learned  to  suspect 


Turgenev  15 

those  nearest  to  him.  Long  afterwards  he  ex- 
claimed, with  a  knowledge  of  life  that  had  its 
origin  in  his  very  childhood  :  "  But  as  for  marry- 
ing, what  a  cruel  irony  !  " 

And  it  was  not  only  with  lime  trees  that  he  kept 
appointments  in  this  garden  of  wonder.  Very 
soon  he  knew  what  it  was  to  wait  breathlessly 
for  hurried  footsteps  on  the  fine  sand.  Very  soon 
he  divined  some,  at  least,  of  the  secrets  of  that 
human  passion  which  retained  for  him  to  the  very 
end  something  of  freshness  and  mystery  and 
tenderness.  He  met  once  suddenly  among  the 
raspberry  bushes  a  young  serf  girl  in  whose  presence 
he  became  speechless.  Perhaps  it  was  she  who 
came  to  him  in  the  blazing  heat  of  a  summer  daj^ 
and,  though  he  was  the  master,  seized  him  by  the 
hair  as  she  uttered  the  one  word,  "  Come."  The 
name  of  this  girl  was  Claudie,  and  forty  years  later 
Turgenev  recalled  with  intense  emotion  "ce  doux 
empoignement  "  of  his  hair.  But  neither  Claudie 
nor  any  other  serf  girl  taught  him  to  believe  in  love, 
and  he  had  already  ceased  to  believe  in  the  bounty 
of  Providence.  **  It  is  here  in  this  same  garden," 
he  wrote  from  Spasskoe  in  1868,  "  that  I  witnessed, 
when  quite  a  child,  the  contest  of  an  adder  and  a 
toad  which  made  me  for  the  first  time  doubtful  of 
a  good  Providence." 

In  order  to  understand  not  only  the  childhood 
of  Ivan  Turgenev  but  also  the  whole  trend  of  his 
work,  his  aspirations,  his  reasonable  patience,  one 


i6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

must  know  something  of  Madame  Turgenev,  his 
mother.  For,  it  was  she,  more  than  any  one  else, 
who  imbued  his  youth  with  the  idea  of  tyranny 
and  his  manhood  with  an  unceasing  resistance 
to  it.  Madame  Turgenev  had  experienced  tyranny 
in  her  own  childhood.  Her  step-father  hated  her 
and  ill-treated  her  until  she  reached  her  seventeenth 
year,  when  he  began  to  persecute  her  with  still 
more  sinister  attentions.  She  escaped  from  his 
house  half-dressed,  and  took  refuge  with  her  uncle, 
Ivan  Loutovinoff,  at  Spasskoe.  In  spite  of  the 
demands  of  her  mother,  her  uncle  retained  the 
guardianship  of  his  niece,  and  at  the  age  of  thirty 
she  inherited  his  immense  fortune,  including  the 
property  of  Spasskoe,  where  her  husband,  Serguei 
Nicolaevitch  Turgenev,  whom  she  married  soon 
after  her  uncle's  death,  came  to  live.  Here  she 
lived  the  life  of  a  Russian  chatelaine  of  the  old 
school.  She  had  her  own  chapel  and  her  own 
theatre,  the  actors  being  recruited  from  her  serfs, 
who  also  provided  her  with  an  orchestra.  Her 
adopted  daughter  admits,  in  one  passage  at  least, 
that  though  she  was  neither  young  nor  beautiful, 
and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  her  face  was  pitted 
with  small-pox,  she  was  so  spirituelle  that  she 
was  always  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  adorers. 
Her  relations  with  both  her  sons  seem  to  have 
been  always  more  or  less  difficult,  but  this  entry 
in  her  private  journal,  dated  1839,  i^  addressed 
to  her  son  Ivan  :    "  C'est  que  Jean,  c'est  mon 


Turgenev  17 

soleil  a  moi ;  je  ne  vols  que  lui,  et  lorsqu'il 
s' eclipse,  je  ne  vols  plus  clair,  je  ne  sais  plus  ou 
j'en  suis.  Le  coeur  d'une  mere  ne  se  trompe 
jamais,  et  vous  savez,  Jean,  que  mon  instinct  est 
plus  sur  que  ma  raison." 

It  was  stated  in  a  review  that  Madame  Turgenev 
bequeathed  this  journal  to  her  son,  but  her  adopted 
daughter  maintains  that  it  was  burnt  in  the 
garden  before  her  eyes  in  1849.  "  ^^  i^  i^  virtue," 
she  asks,  "  of  the  fatal  law  of  heredity  that  Ivan 
Turgenev  in  his  turn  refused  to  publish  his  own 
journal,  and,  following  the  example  of  his  mother, 
burnt  it  at  Bougival  in  a  garden  ?  "  Both  of 
these  journals  are  a  loss,  the  one  to  literature,  the 
other  to  all  those  who  would  seek  to  understand 
the  mental  attitude  of  the  serf-owners  of  long  ago. 

Madame  Turgenev  could  not  understand  how 
her  son,  who  was  a  noble,  could  wish  to  become  a 
writer.  A  writer,  she  tells  him,  is  a  man  who 
scratches  paper  for  money.  Her  son  should  enter 
the  army  and  serve  the  Czar.  She  was  not,  how- 
ever, wholly  hostile  to  the  Arts ;  and  when  Liszt 
came  to  Moscow,  as  he  did  that  very  year,  Madame 
Turgenev  went  with  her  son  to  the  concert-hall. 
She  was  unable  to  walk,  and  as,  through  an  over- 
sight, the  customary  means  of  conveying  her  had 
been  neglected,  Ivan  carried  her  in  his  arms  up  the 
steep  steps  of  the  concert-hall.  When  Madame 
Viardot  came  to  Moscow  in  1846  Madame  Turgenev, 
in  spite  of  her  disapproval  of  her  son's  enthusiasm, 


i8  Two  Russian  Reformers 

went  to  hear  her.  "  II  faut  avouer  pourtant," 
she  admitted  grudgingly,  "  que  cette  maudite 
bohemienne  chante  fort  bien  !  " 

But  if  Madame  Turgenev  was  disdainful  towards 
artists,  she  was  absolutely  tyrannous  towards  her 
serfs,  even  towards  the  doctor,  Porphyre  Karta- 
cheff,  who  accompanied  Ivan  when  he  was  a 
university  student  in  Berlin.  Porphyre  acted  as 
a  kind  of  superior  valet,  and  when  they  returned 
to  Russia  the  relations  between  master  and  servant 
were  most  cordial  and  Madame  Turgenev  alone 
continued  to  treat  him  as  a  serf.  Ivan  implored 
his  mother  to  emancipate  him,  but  she  absolutely 
refused.  Once,  when  her  adopted  daughter  was 
ill,  Madame  Turgenev  wished  to  call  in  other 
doctors,  but  Porphyre  assured  her  that  it  was  un- 
necessary and  that  he  himself  would  cure  the 
patient.  Madame  Turgenev  looked  him  in  the 
eyes  as  she  said  :  "  Remember,  if  you  do  not  cure 
her  you  will  go  to  Siberia."  Porphyre  accepted 
the  risk  and,  fortunately  for  him,  his  patient 
recovered. 

The  chatelaine  was  equally  inflexible  in  her 
attitude  towards  her  son,  Nicolas,  who  aroused 
her  anger  by  wishing  to  make  a  love-match  with  a 
Mile  Schwartz.  "  Just  as  Ivan  Turgenev,"  com- 
ments his  adopted  sister,  "was  Russian  in  appear- 
ance, so  his  brother  was  English.  When  I  read 
the  romance  of  *  Jane  Eyre  '  I  could  not  represent 
to  myself  Rochester  except  with  the  features  of 


Turgenev  19 

Nicolas  Turgenev."  For  the  rest,  Nicolas  seemed 
to  her  to  be  a  born  tease,  was  a  master  of  languages, 
had  a  strong  voice  as  opposed  to  Ivan's  shrill  one, 
and  was  far  less  anxious  than  Ivan  to  render 
services  to  his  fellow  beings.  Under  the  heading 
"  A  mon  fils  Nicolas  "  there  was  a  note  in  Madame 
Turgenev's  journal  warning  him  against  the 
trammels  of  passion.  She  was  unable,  however, 
to  prevent  this  marriage,  but  when  she  learnt  that 
her  son  Nicolas  had  children  in  St.  Petersburg 
she  would  not  allow  them  to  enter  her  house. 
She  ordered  them  to  be  brought  in  front  of  the 
window,  from  which  she  observed  them  dis- 
passionately, remarking  that  the  eldest  resembled 
his  father  at  the  same  age.  And  this  was  her 
only  comment  on  her  grandchildren.  She  always 
asserted,  indeed,  that  this  union  was  illegal,  and 
she  tried  uselessly  to  bribe  her  son  to  desert  his 
wife  and  children.  In  1849,  however,  she  actually 
gave  her  consent  to  this  marriage,  just  as  a  teirible 
affliction  had  fallen  upon  her  son's  household,  the 
three  children  having  died  in  one  winter.  ^'One 
might  say,"  Nicolas  observed  long  afterwards  to 
his  adopted  sister,  "  that  it  was  the  malediction 
of  my  mother  which  brought  about  the  death  of 
my  children."  This  recalled  a  repellent  and 
characteristic  scene.  Madame  Turgenev,  for  some 
reason  or  other,  had  asked  her  son  for  the  portrait 
of  his  children,  but  when  it  arrived  at  Spasskoe 
she  tore  it  into  fragments. 

2 


20  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Such  violence  was  by  no  means  unusual,  and  as 
one  gradually  realises  the  picture  of  Turgenev's 
home  one  begins  to  understand  those  half-savage 
interiors  into  which  he  introduces  us  so  often 
in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman."  There  was  a 
major-domo  named  Soboleff  upon  whom  she 
was  accustomed  to  vent  her  spleen.  One  of  his 
duties  was  to  bring  her  a  glass  of  water,  of  which 
she  constantly  complained,  finding  it  always  of 
the  wrong  temperature.  On  one  occasion,  she 
threw  the  water  in  his  face,  after  which  he  brought 
her  more  in  another  glass.  Then,  standing  in  front 
of  an  Icon,  the  serf  exclaimed :  "I  swear  before 
this  sacred  image  that  I  have  not  changed  the 
water.  .  .  .  That  which  Madame  has  just  drunk 
is  the  same  as  the  other."  Madame  Turgenev 
ordered  him  out  of  the  room  at  once,  and  when 
he  was  next  seen  he  appeared  altogether  a  changed 
being  :  "  Instead  of  the  elegant  evening  coat, 
he  was  wearing  a  wretched  grey  cloth  caftan  and 
held  a  broom  in  his  hand.  An  order  from  his 
mistress  had  made  him  forfeit  his  position  of 
major-domo  for  that  of  sweeper  of  the  yard.  He 
remained  for  four  years  in  this  new  employment, 
until  he  was  replaced  by  the  mute,  the  master  of 
Moumou." 

The  old  despot  remembered  well  the  tyranny 
that  had  warped  her  own  youth.  Once  she 
visited  with  her  adopted  daughter  her  mother's 
property,  and  together  they  explored  the  silent 


Turgenev  21 

old  house.  As  they  came  out  of  the  drawing- 
room  they  passed  into  a  corridor,  where  Madame 
Turgenev's  companion  was  astonished  at  seeing 
a  door  barricaded  by  planks.  "  I  went  up  to  it 
and  placed  my  hand  on  the  old  brass  latch  which 
stuck  out  between  the  planks,  when  Madame 
Turgenev  seized  my  hand  and  cried  out  :  '  Don't 
touch  it,  don't  touch  it ;  these  rooms  are  accursed.' 
I  shall  never  forget  her  accent  nor  the  expression 
of  her  face,  such  fear  and  hatred  and  fury  were 
written  in  it."  Madame  Turgenev  dragged  her 
away  from  these  apartments  of  her  step-father, 
which  she  remembered  with  all  the  old  fierce 
bitterness  unassuaged. 

Life  with  Madame  Turgenev,  towards  the  end, 
became  utterly  intolerable  for  everybody.  On 
October  28,  1845,  the  birthday  of  Ivan  was  being 
celebrated  with  the  customary  fete,  which  included 
sucking-pigs  and  a  plentiful  supply  of  brandy. 
The  festivities  took  place  as  usual,  but  in  the 
evening  Madame  Turgenev  pretended  to  be  dying. 
She  sent  for  her  confessor,  and  placing  before  her 
the  portrait  of  her  son  Ivan,  exclaimed,  "  Adieu, 
Ivan  !  Adieu,  Nicolas  !  Adieu,  my  children  !  " 
Then  she  ordered  her  forty' servants  and  all  the  men 
employed  about  the  house,  from  the  attendant 
to  the  cashier,  to  say  "  Good-bye  "  to  her.  When 
they  had  filed  out  of  the  room,  Madame  Turgenev 
declared  that  she  felt  better,  and  asked  for  tea. 
The  next  day  the  following  "  order  "  appeared  : 


22  Two  Russian  Reformers 

"  I  give  orders  that  to-morrow  morning  the  dis- 
obedient servants,  Nicolas  Jakovlef,  Ivan  Petrof 
and  Egor  Kondratatief,  shall  sweep  the  court  in 
front  of  my  windows."  These  names  were  those 
of  the  servants  who  had  not  appeared  at  her  bed- 
side, possibly  because  they  were  a  little  drunk 
that  evening.  "  Good-for-nothings  !  drunkards !  " 
exclaimed  Madame  Turgenev — "  they  rejoiced  at 
the  death  of  their  mistress  !  "  At  another  time 
the  chatelaine  said  that  she  was  too  ill  to  allow  the 
fetes  of  Easter  week  to  take  place. 

But  Madame  Turgenev  had  the  courage  of 
her  qualities,  and  when  cholera  broke  out  in  the 
village  she  exhibited  not  the  faintest  trace  of  fear. 
When  it  had  diminished  she  went  to  confession, 
and  with  all  her  old  arrogance  insisted  upon  con- 
fessing in  the  presence  of  her  little  court,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  it  was  against  the  rules  of  the 
Church.  Her  despotism  was  quite  as  merciless 
as  that  of  any  one  of  the  Russian  serf-owners  who 
appear  in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman."  When 
she  discovered  the  marriage  of  her  son,  Nicolas, 
she  was  enraged  against  Poliakoff,  her  major-domo, 
for  having  kept  the  news  from  her.  So  furious 
was  she  on  this  occasion  that  she  was  on  the  point 
of  throwing  a  huge  crutch  at  his  head  when  the 
entrance  of  Nicolas  Turgenev,  her  brother-in-law, 
checked  her,  thus  probably  saving  Poliakoff's  life. 
The  next  day  he  was  banished  to  a  distant  property 
and  was  reduced  from  the  rank  of  major-domo 


Turgenev  23 

to  that  of  a  simple  copyist.  His  wife,  Agatha, 
was  enceinte  at  the  time  and  sick  with  grief,  but 
Madame  Turgenev  was  immovable.  The  next 
year,  however,  she  did  repent  of  this  particular  act 
of  tyranny,  and  not  only  restored  Poliakoff  to  his 
old  position  but  actually  asked  Agatha  to  pardon 
her.  But  it  was  almost  impossible  to  make  Madame 
Turgenev  realise  the  very  idea  of  liberty,  and 
Turgenev  championed  the  cause  of  the  serfs  in  vain. 
But  even  in  those  early  days  he  prophesied  that 
the  day  of  freedom  would  assuredly  come. 

He  also  championed  his  brother's  cause,  now 
that  Madame  Turgenev  had  depiived  Nicolas  of 
all  means  of  existence.  To  every  demand  his 
mother  opposed  a  deep  cunning  under  the  mask 
of  generosity.  She  offered,  in  fact,  a  property  to 
each  of  her  sons,  but  always  declined  to  legalise 
the  action.  Nothing,  indeed,  seems  to  have  given 
her  greater  amusement  than  this  comedy  of  giving 
which  meant  nothing  at  all.  "  I  pity  my  brother," 
protested  Ivan  Turgenev.  '*  Why  have  you  made 
him  so  wretched  ?  You  accorded  him  authority 
to  marry,  you  made  him  leave  the  service  and 
come  here  with  his  family,  while  at  St.  Petersburg 
he  was  earning  his  living  .  .  .  and  since  he  has 
arrived,  you  torture  him  .  .  .  you  torment  him 
ceaselessly.  ..."  Neither  of  her  sons  was  allowed 
to  come  into  her  presence  without  permission, 
and  once  when  Ivan  asked  to  see  her  she  flew  into 
a  rage  and  tore  up  his  portrait.     But  she  was 


24  Two  Russian  Reformers 

furious  when  she  heard  that  the  critics  had  attacked 
his  work  ;  "  Comment  !  toi  un  noble,  un  Tour- 
gueneff,  on  ose  te  critiquer  !  " 

Towards  the  end  the  brothers  left  for  Tour- 
guenevo,  their  father's  property,  and  Madame 
Turgenev,  on  hearing  the  news,  started  off  for 
Spasskoe  in  a  rage.  On  arrival  she  was  informed 
that  her  sons  had  entered  the  house  for  an  hour 
or  two,  whereupon  she  lashed  Poliakoff  across 
the  face  for  alluding  to  them  as  "  our  masters." 
The  brothers  continued  to  live  at  Tourguenevo, 
which  was  only  a  few  miles  away,  and  Nicolas 
saw  his  mother  on  November  15,  1850.  The 
next  day  Ivan  tried  to  see  her,  but  was  too  late, 
for  she  was  already  dead.  She  had  certainly 
become  softer  in  these  last  days,  for  she  left  not 
only  money  but  liberty  to  Poliakoff  and  Porph3Te. 
**  Yes  !  "  commented  Agatha,  "  I  have  suffered 
a  great  deal  from  the  late  Madame  Turgenev  ; 
but  none  the  less,  I  was  very  fond  of  her.  She  was 
a  real  mistress." 

As  one  reads  the  intimately  personal  memoir 
by  his  adopted  sister,  one  sees  how  Turgenev 
struggled  hopelessly  against  this  coma  of  tyranny 
which  lay  everywhere  around  him.  It  was  un- 
necessary to  convince  his  reason  ;  by  temperament 
he  was  antagonistic  to  the  idea  of  owning  a  fellow- 
creature,  and  yet  even  he  violated  this  deep  inner 
conviction  and  purchased  a  serf  gi'rl.  Turgenev 
had  a  rich  uncle  at  Moscow,  at  whose  house  he  met 


Turgenev  25 

a  cousin,  Elizabeth  Turgenev,  a  blonde  of  about 
sixteen  who  possessed  a  property  near  Orel.  She 
administered  the  affairs  of  this  village  herself, 
and  Turgenev  paid  her  a  visit  once  or  twice  every 
week.  Elizabeth  had  a  young  femme  de  chambre, 
a  serf  girl  named  Feoctista  who  was  called  Fetistka. 
She  was  not  at  all  beautiful,  but  she  appealed  to 
Turgenev  just  as  some  of  the  wistful  serf  girls  in 
his  sketches  appealed  to  him.  "  Fetistka,"  writes 
Pavlovsky,  "  did  not  strike  one  at  first  glance  ; 
her  beauty  was  not  at  all  extraordinary.  A 
brunette,  thinnish,  not  ugly  but  not  pretty,  nothing 
more,  one  might  have  pictured  her  readily  thus  ; 
but  on  observing  her  more  closely,  one  found  in 
her  drawn  features,  in  her  pretty  face  tanned 
by  the  sun,  in  her  sad  glances,  something  which 
attracted  and  charmed."  Turgenev  observed  her 
closely ;  he  was  charmed. 

Elizabeth  Turgenev  was  very  fond  of  Fetistka 
and  had  her  dressed  like  a  lady.  Her  cousin  had 
already  sworn  to  do  his  best  to  bring  about  the 
abolition  of  the  serfs,  but  none  the  less  he  desired 
to  purchase  Fetistka.  Elizabeth  refused  his  price, 
saying  that  on  no  account  would  she  be  separated 
from  her  maid.  After  much  bargaining  the  price 
of  seven  hundred  roubles  was  arranged,  though 
a  serf  girl  at  that  time  was  valued  at  a  maximum 
of  fifty  roubles.  Turgenev  took  her  to  Spasskoe- 
Celo,  where  he  remained  in  retirement  with  her 
for  about  a  year.     During  this  time  he  tried  to 


26  Two  Russian  Reformers 

teach  her  to  read,  but  apparently  with  very  Uttle 
success.     He   seems,  indeed,  to  have   wearied  of 
her  quickly  enough,  and  to  have  taken  to  shooting 
as  a  distraction.     None  the  less,  it  was  probably 
this  romance  manque  that  inspired  that  sensitive 
sympathy  with  a  serf  girl  in  a  false  position  which 
is  so  significant  in  ''  Fathers  and  Sons."     In  that 
book  it  is  the  old-fashioned  Pavel  who  bids   his 
brother  realise  that  a  serf  girl  is  a  fellow  human 
being,  and  it  is  by  his  advice,  and  not  at  all  at  the 
advice  of  Bazaroff,  the  new  type,  that  he  finally 
marries  her.     Turgenev  sinned   against  his  own 
conscience  in  this  sinister  purchase,  but  at  least  he 
did  everything  in  his  power  for  Fetistka's  daughter, 
Assia,    whose    education    was    superintended    by 
Madame  Viardot,  about  whose  methods  Turgenev 
very  nearly  fought  a  duel  with  Count  Tolstoy. 

It  was  at  Spasskoe  that  Ivan  Turgenev  turned 
away  from  his  cosmopolitan  education  and  sought 
from  a  serf  named  Pounine  the  inspiration  of 
Russian  poetry.  In  "  Pounine  and  Babourine  "  he 
has  sketched  the  old  serf  reading  aloud  from  a  big 
book  to  the  young  master,  who  has  just  escaped 
from  the  French  governess.  The  boy  hangs  on 
every  word,  renewing  in  the  quiet  garden  the 
ancient  traditions  of  his  race  from  which  all  these 
foreign  preceptors  were  endeavouring  to  tear  him 
away.  Turgenev  never  lost  his  boyish  absorption 
in  nature,  which  is  so  different  from  verbose 
admiration  of  scenery.     He  loved  best  the  land- 


Turgenev  27 

scapes  with  which  human  hfe  blends  with  neither 
disdain  nor  terror.  The  magnificence  of  Switzer- 
land was  too  remote  from  human  life  to  appeal 
to  him  whose  dreams  came  always  from  the 
mountainless  steppes. 

Turgenev  was  not  merely  to  recall  the  childish 
incidents  of  the  garden  of  Spasskoe.     He  was  to 
recreate,  almost  as  if  in  a  trance,  each  of  those 
poignant    impressions    that    had    been    stamped 
upon  his  youth.     Suddenly,  at  one  or  other  of 
those  dinners  recorded  so  minutely  in  the  "  Journal 
des  Goncourts,"  in  the  midst  of  all  the  Parisian 
gossip,  arid,  mocking,  fatigued,  the  Russian  giant 
would    feel    himself    transplanted    into    that    old 
garden  of  his  Russian  home.     Once  more  to  his 
nostrils,   suffocated  by  the  boulevards  of  Paris, 
there  would  return  the  old  sweet,  sharp  scents, 
and   he  would    hear    through    all    that    mordant 
chatter,  the  sound  of  hurrying  footsteps  darting 
through  the  shadows  or  the  love-laugh  of  a  young 
girl  in  the  fading  light.    It  is  no  wonder  that  these 
Parisians  listened  to  him  as  he  visualised  across 
their  dinner  table  these  pictures  penetrated  by  the 
distilled  perfume  of  youth  and  regret.     And  these 
impressions,   physical  in  their  intensity  and  in- 
voluntarily truthful,  he  was  to  reproduce,  as  in  a 
veritable  potpourri  of  memories,  in  two  exquisite 
works. 

Turgenev's  "  First  Love  "  has  in  it  more  than  a 
hint  of  actual  memory — has  in  it,  indeed,  the  very 


28  Two  Russian  Reformers 

aroma  of  illusion  which  words  are  usually  impotent 
to  disclose.  It  is  the  preservation  of  a  boyish 
idolatry  which,  in  at  least  one  instance,  survived 
as  a  stab  of  actual  pain.  Turgenev,  according  to 
the  account  of  his  mother's  adopted  daughter, 
was  very  much  missed  at  home  after  fame  had 
come  to  him  in  the  outer  world.  One  person  in 
particular  regretted  his  absence,  and  when  he 
returned  on  a  visit  she  came  over  and  over  again 
to  the  house  in  order  to  attract  the  man  whom 
years  before  she  had  dismissed  as  a  foolish  boy. 

"  For  a  woman  who  is  nearly  forty,"  observed 
Madame  Turgenev,  "  she  is  really  not  so  bad. 
She  has  put  herself  to  all  this  trouble  for  you,  and 
you  have  shown  yourself  scarcely  grateful." 

"  It  is  true,"  replied  Turgenev  in  all  seriousness, 
*'  but  at  the  time  that  I  loved  her  I  was  still  almost 
a  child.  What  did  I  not  suffer  then  !  ...  I  re- 
member that  when  she  passed  close  to  me,  my 
heart  seemed  ready  to  leap  out  of  my  breast.  .  .  . 
But  that  very  happy  time  has  passed  !  Now,  I 
understand  that  love  no  more.  ...  I  have  no 
longer  that  ardour  of  youth  ;  it  was  made  up  of 
that  love  which  contented  itself  with  a  glance, 
with  a  flower  that  fell  from  her  hair.  It  was 
enough  for  me  to  pick  up  that  flower,  and  I  was 
happ3%  and  I  asked  for  nothing  more." 

It  is  the  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star  incon- 
gruously blended  with  the  scrutinising  analysis 
of  Turgenev  that  gives  an  acrid  tenderness  to  this 


Turgenev  29 

emotional  experience,  making,  again  with  dis- 
concerting incongruity,  a  human  document  out 
of  a  work  of  art. 

The  memory  of  "  Spring  Torrents  "  was  also 
precious  to  Turgenev,  in  spite  of  the  attacks 
made  upon  it  by  the  Russian  critics.  One  day 
Pavlovsky  expressed  his  appreciation  of  it,  and 
Turgenev  was  delighted.  "  The  whole  of  that 
story,"  said  he,  "  is  true.  I  have  lived  it  and 
felt  it  personally.  It  is  my  own  history.  Madame 
Polozoff  is  an  incarnation  of  the  Princess  Trou- 
betzkoi,  whom  I  knew  very  well.  In  her  time 
she  made  a  great  deal  of  sensation  in  Paris,  and 
she  is  still  remembered  there.  Pantaleone  lived 
at  her  house.  He  occupied  there  an  intermediate 
position  between  the  role  of  friend  and  that  of 
servitor.  The  Italian  family,  too,  is  taken  from 
life.  But  I  have  changed  the  details  and  I  have 
transposed,  for  I  cannot  photograph  blindly.  For 
example,  the  Princess  was  a  native  of  Bohemia 
by  birth  ;  I  have  drawn  the  type  of  a  Russian 
grande  dame  of  plebeian  extraction.  As  for 
Pantaleone,  I  have  placed  him  in  the  Italian 
family.  ...  I  wrote  this  romance  with  real 
pleasure,  and  I  love  it  as  I  love  all  my  works 
written  in  this  spirit." 

In  the  course  of  this  conversation  Turgenev 
protested  bitterly  against  the  Russian  critics,  who 
demanded  always  from  him  a  thesis  instead  of 
an   experience,   a   political  proclamation  instead 


30  Two  Russian  Reformers 

of  a  work  of  art.  That  is  the  old  grudge  against 
Turgenev,  and  it  survives  to  the  present  day. 
But  the  charm  of  such  exquisite  regrets  also  sur- 
vives, and  one  might  as  well  protest  against  the 
torrents  of  Spring  as  against  this  book  to  which 
they  have  lent  their  name,  their  power  and  their 
first  rush  of  happiness. 

Asked  which  of  his  books  he  loved  best,  Turgenev 
replied  :  "  'First  Love.'  It  is  a  true  story,  which 
happened  just  as  I  have  related  it  and  whose 
principal  hero  even  is  my  father."  Here,  indeed, 
we  have  not  merely  a  record  of  early  passion  but 
the  first  love  of  youth  itself.  Others  have  sought 
to  recapture  the  aroma  of  love's  first  lost  illusion, 
but  they  have  done  so  almost  invariably  with 
lyric  intensity  of  feeling.  Turgenev,  in  this  book, 
as  in  all  his  works,  remains  a  psychologist.  The 
boy  watches  Zinaiaida,  unobserved,  as  he  thinks, 
and  from  that  moment  he  is  "  translated  "  like 
Titania's  weaver.  He  is  her  slave  from  that 
moment,  and  nobody,  least  of  all  himself,  can  tell 
her  what  he  feels.  But  in  spite  of  all  the  magic 
of  his  dream  he  is  curiously  observant  of  her  and 
of  everybody  and  of  everything  around  her.  He 
notes  accurately  the  signs  of  poverty  in  her  home. 
He  notices  the  objectionable  manners  of  the  old 
princess,  her  mother.  Boy  as  he  is,  he  analyses 
each  one  of  her  admirers  and  differentiates  between 
the  phases  of  their  homage.  He  is  sensitive  to  the 
slightest  change  in  the  girl's  attitude  towards  him- 


Turgenev  31 

self.  He  is  a  poet  to  whom  the  sUghtest  concrete 
detail  preserves  the  significance  of  its  moment. 
He  is  a  lover  and  at  the  same  time  a  realist.  His 
realism,  here,  as  always,  is  part  of  himself,  in- 
voluntary, and  shows  itself  even  in  the  most 
exalted  moments — when,  for  example,  he  kisses 
for  the  first  time  that  cool  white  hand.  Not  for 
an  instant  does  acumen  lose  itself  in  ecstasy.  The 
boy  knows  that  all  do  not  love  Zinaiaida  as  he 
himself  loves  her.  Already  he  divines  that  there 
is  in  the  atmosphere  of  passion  something  mena- 
cing and  evil.  Something  lurks  below  the  fair 
outer  surface.  All  is  not  good  in  the  sunlight  ; 
he  had  learnt  that  lesson  once  and  for  ever  in  the 
Eden  of  Spasskoe ;  and  so  even  in  this  first  love- 
dream  of  youth  Turgenev  was  to  detect  the 
suggestion  of  passion,  withering  and  baneful. 

The  attitude  of  the  younger  towards  the  older 
generation  is  divulged  in  every  page  of  this  treasury 
of  the  heart's  secrets.  It  is  his  own  father  and 
mother  whom  he  reveals  in  this  clear-eyed  scrutiny 
of  youth.  How  well  he  knew  the  exteriors  of 
those  familiar  figures  !  How  well  he  divined  what 
he  was  always  forbidden  to  know — the  inner 
recesses  of  their  temperaments !  One  sees  the 
elderly,  jealous  woman  dissatisfied  with  life  and 
incapable  of  either  adaptability  or  submission. 
She  is  suspicious  of  her  husband  and  suspicious  of 
her  son.  That  bitter  boyhood  of  the  great  novelist 
is    mercilessly    revealed    without    any    softening 


32  Two  Russian  Reformers 

process  of  memory.  The  old  quarrels,  the  old 
insults,  the  old  recriminations  vibrate  into  life 
after  the  interval  of  years.  It  is  as  though  all  the 
unuttered  secrets  of  that  old  garden  of  his  child- 
hood had  been  preserved  in  the  cylinders  of  some 
mysterious  phonograph,  a  phonograph  to  which 
nature  had  communicated  the  drowsy  whispers  of 
summer,  a  phonograph  which  had  caught  and 
mellowed  all  this  life  that  had  so  long  passed  away. 
Everybody  lives  in  this  old  house  as  though  the 
novelist  had  restored  them  to  life  by  the  intensity 
of  his  memory.  All  the  old  bitter  jealousy,  the 
brooding  doubt,  the  rancour  of  long  ago  stirs  again 
restlessly  in  these  pages.  And  it  is  in  this  hostile, 
difficult  atmosphere  that  the  boy's  delicate  secret 
swells  into  tremulous  life. 

As  he  tells  the  story  he  drops  a  hint  here  and 
there,  as  it  were  half  by  accident,  about  one  or 
other  of  these  unknown  people.  We  catch  a  chance 
fragment  of  a  conversation.  An  exclamation  is 
overheard,  and  gradually  we  know  these  people 
in  precisely  the  same  sense  that  the  young  lover 
of  Zinaiaida  knows  them.  Like  him,  we  are,  after 
a  fashion,  learning  them.  Like  him,  too,  we 
divine  only  too  quickly  that  all  is  not  well  in  this 
idyl  of  first  love. 

And  then  the  Russian  magician  presents  to  us  the 
ultimate  illusion  of  his  art.  The  boy  cnscovers  that 
Zinaiaida  is  in  love.  Not  for  a  moment  had  he 
been  deceived  by  this  or  that  swift,  sudden  caprice. 


Turgenev  33 

He  had  suffered  on  those  occasions,  but  he  had 
known  always  that  the  thing  he  feared  had  not 
happened  as  yet.  When  it  did  happen,  he  recog- 
nised instantly  the  malady,  the  consuming  malady 
of  Phaedra,  because,  to  no  small  extent,  he  shared 
it.  Now  love  has  come  to  her,  but  not  for  him. 
Somebody  has  the  right  to  wait  for  her  beside  the 
fountain  in  the  garden.  Somebody  is  able  to  rouse 
the  wonderful  love-light  in  those  mocking,  restless 
eyes.  Who  is  it  ?  All  youth  is  stammering  out 
the  eternal  question.  And  the  change  in  the  girl 
is  at  once  as  significant  in  its  external  simphcity 
and  its  internal  complexity  as  the  change  in  her 
boy  lover.  Each  now  is  drawn  to  each  because 
they  breathe  a  common  atmosphere,  the  baneful 
atmosphere  of  passion,  which,  even  in  the  garden 
of  Spasskoe,  Turgenev  had  learned  to  suspect. 
The  boy  suspects  now,  and  the  little  drama,  in 
which  all  youth  is  compressed,  develops  slowly 
like  youth's  own  secret,  and  without  any  obtrusion 
of  merely  fictitious  incident.  It  is  life  that  we 
are  watching,  and  in  spite  of  his  equivocal  in- 
souciance Turgenev  has  infused  something  of  the 
terror  of  life  into  this  idyl  of  regret. 

Somebody  is  waiting  for  the  woman  he  loves. 
Somebody  is  waiting  for  Zinaiaida  in  the  pervaded 
darkness  of  the  night.  Somebody  will  peer  into 
those  gleaming  eyes  through  the  shadows  to  learn 
the  secret  that  had  been  always  withheld  from 
him.     The  boy  will  kill  him  ;    he  will  kill  the 


34  Two  Russian  Reformers 

enemy  who  has  slain  his  dream.  The  fantasy  of 
boyish  passion  has  become  a  nightmare  of  hatred. 
Knife  in  hand  he  awaits  the  man  whom  Zinalaida 
is  luring  into  this  garden  which  has  lost  its  in- 
nocence. Through  the  long  hours  of  the  night 
he  watches,  and  then  he  hears  footsteps  at  last. 
He  is  ready  to  kill  now,  to  kill  swiftly  and  surely ; 
but  all  at  once  he  stays  his  hand.  It  is  his  own 
father  who  is  approaching  the  fountain  in  that 
mysterious  garden. 

Instantly  the  boy's  soul  seems  to  shrivel,  driven 
back  into  the  timidity  of  youth.  All  the  hidden, 
hideous  background  of  his  dear  fantasy  reveals 
itself.  That  is  what  life  is,  it  seems.  The  suffer- 
ing of  love  strikes  at  each  in  turn.  And  now — 
so  infinitely  deeper  is  the  psychology  of  Turgenev 
than  the  inflamed  Byronism  of  the  Romantics— - 
the  boy  feels  drawn  towards  his  father  by  reason 
of  this  mystery  which  has  entered  the  life  of  each. 
He  continues  to  share  this  mystery  and  to  be 
drawn  towards  the  master  of  Zinaiaida,  even 
when  he  sees  her  kissing  her  naked  arm,  red  from 
the  lash  of  his  father's  horsewhip.  Yes,  love  is 
like  that,  too  ;  it  has  room  for  everything,  the 
implacable  malady.  Here,  as  in  all  his  works, 
Turgenev  refuses  to  make  life  fit  in  with  the  little 
plots  and  plans  of  the  experienced  novelist. 
Zinaiaida,  after  all  this  inner  tragedy  which  is 
regarded  as  comedy  by  the  outside  world,  survives 
and  marries.     Her  boy  lover  will  see  her  again. 


Turgenev  35 

and  will  consciously  seek  to  renew  that  spell  which 
had  brought  the  magic  of  regret  into  his  youth. 
But  some  wretched  little  accident  intervenes,  and 
when  at  last  he  calls  at  her  house  it  is  only  to  hear 
that  she  is  dead. 

In  the  quiet  of  Spasskoe  the  slow  years  followed 
each  other  languidly  as  the  whisper  of  the  outer 
world  comes  to  those  who  cling  to  the  steppes. 
It  was  the  steppes  and  the  natural  life  of  the 
Russian  peasant,  stifled  and  starved  though  it 
was,  that  saved  the  future  novelist  from  the 
artificial  influences  of  his  home.  He  was  badly 
treated,  but  his  brother  Nicolas  fared  even  worse. 
Only  the  servants  deigned  to  speak  the  mother 
tongue.  The  conversations  between  his  parents, 
often  bitter  and  quarrelsome,  were  carried  on  in 
French,  and  when  Varvara  Petrovna  uttered  a 
prayer  to  her  God  it  was  in  the  polite  language  of 
France.  Sympathy  between  parents  and  children 
was  non-existent,  and  in  his  childhood  Turgenev 
acquired  that  intensified  sense  of  injustice  which 
was  afterwards  to  find  expression  in  so  many  of 
his  works. 

The  days  of  foreign  governesses  and  tutors 
passed,  and  Turgenev  was  placed  in  a  school  kept 
by  a  German  in  Moscow,  after  which  he  entered 
the  Institut  Lazaref  in  the  same  city.  Here,  too, 
his  native  language  was  ignored,  but  the  boy 
became  enthusiastic  on  the  subject  of  Zagoskino, 
one  of  whose  works  was  being  read  aloud  by  a 

3 


36  Two  Russian  Reformers 

professor.     "I  know  him  by  heart,"  he  writes; 
"  one  day  I  fell  on  a  pupil  who  interrupted  the 
reading  with  my  lists  clenched."     In  1832,  in  his 
fifteenth  year,  he  left  the  Institut  Lazaref  in  order 
to  prepare  for  the  University.     A  complete  period 
of  his  life  had  already  closed,   a  period  which, 
so  far  as  his  art  is  concerned,  was  unconsciously 
fruitful.     Already  there  had  come  into  being  that 
curious   duality    which    is   so   significant    in    the 
evasive  temperament  of  Turgenev.     It  is  a  com- 
monplace to  explain  this  duality  by  the  statement 
that  there  were  two  Turgenevs,  the  one  occidental 
and  the  other   oriental.     The   duality,   however, 
lies  far  deeper  than  this,  and  had  already  asserted 
itself  in  his  suppressed  and  imaginative  youth. 
There  were  already  formed,  in  embryo  as  it  were, 
the  two  Turgenevs  who  were  to  exist  always  side 
by  side,  the  one  luminous,  receptive,  impassive, 
with  a  deep  love  of  nature  and  a  sympathy  for  his 
fellow  man,  sensitive  to  all  impressions  whether 
of  life  or  art,  the  other  equally  sensitive,  but  sus- 
picious almost  to  the  point  of  malady,  distrustful 
alike   of   nature   and   of  man,   sombre   with   the 
ineradicable  doubt  of  the  ultimate  purpose  of  life, 
as  though  his  whole  future  had   been  shadowed 
by  that  combat  between  an  adder  and  a  toad  in 
the  garden  of  Spasskoe.     The  one  Turgenev  was 
to  become  docile,  affectionate,  fond  of  home  and 
of   the    simplest    domestic   pleasures,    while    the 
other  Turgenev,  remembering  all  the  enigmatic 


Turgenev  37 

secrets  and  bitter  suspicions  of  his  early  home, 
was  to  insist,  sometimes  sadly,  sometimes  ironic- 
ally, on  celibacy.  Already  passion  had  entered 
those  curious  twin  lives,  for  the  first  of  which  it 
was  to  retain  always  the  aroma  of  tenderness,  of 
romance,  of  the  eternally  unexpected,  while  for 
the  other  life  of  that  other  Turgenev  it  was  to  be 
ever  tainted  by  the  poison  of  suspicion,  by  the 
gnawing  regret  for  the  misunderstood  moment 
and  the  ironical  caress.  To  Turgenev,  as  to  Alfred 
de  Musset,  there  sounded  even  in  childhood  a 
haunting  whisper  of  a  companion  who  was  never 
to  forsake  him  : 

Je  ne  suis  ni  dieu  ni  demon, 
Et  tu  m'as  nommd  par  mon  nom 
Quand  tu  m'as  appel<^  ton  frere  ; 
Ou  tu  vas,  j'y  serai  toujours, 
Jusqu'au  dernier  de  tes  jours, 
Ou  j'irai  m'asseoir  sur  ta  pierre. 

Le  ciel  m'a  confie  ton  coeur ; 
Quand  tu  seras  dans  la  douleur, 
Viens  k  moi  sans  inquietude  ; 
Je  te  sui\Tai  sur  le  chemin, 
Mais  je  ne  puis  toucher  ta  main. 
Ami,  je  suis  la  Solitude. 

What  solitude  was  to  the  French  poet,  suspicion 
became  for  the  Russian  novelist. 

But  in  the  early  university  days  Turgenev  sur- 
rendered himself  to  the  generous  influence  of  ideas. 
At  the  University  of  Moscow  he  came  under  the 


38  Two  Russian  Reformers 

spell  of  German  philosophy,  and  particularly  under 
that  of  Hegel.  These  influences,  however,  which 
inspired  so  many  young  Russians,  did  not  damp 
the  normal  high  spirits  of  youth.  The  devotees 
of  Hegel  seem  to  have  been  rather  uproarious 
undergraduates,  and  there  were  frequent  disturb- 
ances in  the  class-rooms  and  even  the  lectures  were 
occasionally  interrupted.  In  1835,  on  the  death 
of  his  father  and  the  entry  of  his  brother  into  the 
School  of  Artillery,  the  family  moved  to  the  new 
capital,  and  Turgenev  entered  the  University  of 
St.  Petersburg.  Here,  no  less  a  person  than  Gogol 
was  one  of  the  examiners,  but  it  was  not  until  he 
had  resigned  that  the  students  became  aware  that 
he  was  the  famous  author  of  the  "  Revizor." 
"<Even  as  a  boy  of  seventeen  Turgenev  had 
developed  a  curious  love  of  mystification,  which 
never  wholly  deserted  him  in  after-life.  Ques- 
tioned by  a  professor  on  the  subject  of  trials  by 
ordeal,  the  future  novelist  enumerated  the  different 
tests,  including  among  them  that  of  the  calf's  tail. 
Asked  for  details,  he  explained  that  in  certain 
cases  a  calf's  tail  was  greased  and  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  accused.  The  beast  was  then  struck 
with  a  stick,  and  if  its  tail  did  not  slip  through 
the  hands  of  the  accused  at  the  first  blow  he  was 
declared  innocent.  Asked  for  references,  Turgenev 
gave  several,  but  was  eventually  exposed  on  a  point 
of  chronology.  Years  afterwards  he  loved  to 
invent  more  personal  mystifications.     He  would 


Turgenev  39 

declare  himself  the  hero  of  incidents  or  accidents, 
ranging  from  the  capture  of  a  woman's  heart  to 
an  affair  of  a  runaway  horse.  He  would  even 
invent  a  wholly  imaginary  game  bag  and  invite  his 
friends  to  dinner  on  the  strength  of  it.  In  short, 
he  was  to  jest  on  the  most  trivial  and  on  the  most 
serious  matters. 

At  Petersburg,  however,  he  was  seized  by 
literary  aspirations  for  the  first  time,  although 
he  had  already  made  crude  attempts  at  poetry  in 
his  school  days.  Already,  too,  the  love  of  wander- 
ing, which  he  has  so  often  interpreted,  seems  to 
have  entered  his  heart.  In  1838  he  started  on  his 
first  journey  abroad  on  the  steamer  Nicholas  I. 
The  crossing  was  not  without  a  hint  of  tragedy, 
for  the  young  student  was  startled  while  at  a  game 
of  cards  by  the  cry  of  "  Fire."  Turgenev,  accord- 
ing to  some  accounts,  dashed  on  deck,  hustling 
women  and  children  and  crying  out  at  the  top  of  his 
shrill  voice,  which  contrasted  so  with  his  enormous 
body,  "  Save  me  !  I  am  the  only  son  of  a  rich 
widow.  Ten  thousand  roubles  to  him  who  will 
save  me."  It  seems  that  for  the  moment  Turgenev, 
who  after  all  was  only  a  boy  at  the  time,  lost  his 
head,  though  he  denied  specifically  that  he  ever 
uttered  the  words  imputed  to  him.  In  any  case 
the  incident  is  not  in  the  least  typical.  What  is 
typical  is  that  years  afterwards,  while  taking  part 
in  private  theatricals,  he  exclaimed  once  again, 
with  one  knows  not  what  touch  of  acrid  self- 


40  Two  Russian  Reformers 

mockery,  "  Save  me  !  I  am  the  only  son  of  a  rich 
widow." 

Turgenev  visited  Europe  to  see,  in  his  own 
words,  "  men  and  things,  more  especially  men." 
It  is  worth  while  insisting  upon  this  point  because 
the  future  author  of  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  " 
is  said  to  have  sworn  an  Oath  of  Hannibal  against 
serfdom  and  to  have  gone  to  the  West  solely  in 
search  of  weapons  against  the  enemy  of  his  country. 
Turgenev,  with  those  sad  memories  of  his  child- 
hood in  his  heart,  may  have  formulated  some  such 
design,  but  he  was  probably  quite  unconscious  of 
any  special  mission  when  he  commenced,  with  his 
mentor,  Porphyre  Kartacheff,  his  studies  at  Berlin. 
Here  he  found  himself  again  in  the  familiar 
atmosphere  of  Hegel.  But  other  things  had 
entered  his  life  besides  German  philosophy.  It 
is  the  period  of  those  generous  illusions  which 
afterwards  become  comparatively  cold.  It  is 
the  period  in  which  even  Turgenev  was  almost 
whole-hearted  in  his  scrutiny  of  life.  Never  was 
life  to  be  so  nearly  sweet  as  it  was  in  these  careless 
student  days.  These  memories,  at  least,  were  to 
survive  almost  untainted  by  irony.  We  have 
glimpses  of  the  young  Russian  enjoying  life, 
indulging  in  a  little  love  affair  with  a  couturiere, 
growing  enthusiastic  about  German  poetry,  and 
even  rat-hunting  with  a  spirited  terrier  !  He 
travels,  too,  in  Switzerland  and  Italy  as  well  as 
in  Germany,  until  at  the  age  of  twenty-three  he 


Ttjrgenev  41 

returns  to  Russia.  The  period  of  youth  is  over. 
It  is  fortunately  by  no  means  a  sealed  book,  for 
Turgenev  is  the  Sanin  of  "  Torrents  of  Spring,"  no 
less  certainly  than  he  is  the  hero  of  "  First  Love." 
Almost  every  great  writer  has  one  book  more 
close  to  him  than  any  other.  Dickens  has  ac- 
knowledged "  David  Copperfield,"  and  Turgenev 
has  acknowledged  "  First  Love,"  which  on  his 
own  authority  is  absolutely  taken  from  his  own 
life.  But  there  is  another  book  which  is  almost 
equally  personal,  whose  pages  are  also  torn  from 
memory.  It  is,  indeed,  a  sequel  to  "First  Love,"  and 
may  well  be  said  to  be,  with  its  companion  volume, 
to  the  great  Russian  what  "  Le  Petit  Chose " 
was  to  Alphonse  Daudet.  For,  Sanin  at  twenty- 
one  is  Turgenev  himself,  and  the  charm  of  that 
love-torrent  at  Frankfort  is  the  charm  of  a  re- 
membered passion.  Like  the  author,  Sanin  is 
tall,  with  clear  eyes  and  an  attractive  expression. 
Glancing  back  at  him,  Turgenev  maintains  that 
softness  and  nothing  but  softness  was  the  keynote 
of  his  nature.  But  it  is  impossible  to  judge  Sanin 
harshly,  for  all  the  fragrance  of  unsullied  memory 
steals  into  this  love-story  of  reality.  Sanin  in  the 
confectioner's  shop  chatting  with  these  Italians 
over  chocolate  and  angel-cake,  with  the  poor  old 
ex -baritone  dancing  attendance  in  the  background, 
who  can  forget  the  picture  ?  Life  glides  by  for 
Sanin  like  a  dream,  and  we  share  the  dream  even 
as  we  fear  the  exquisite  regret  which  is  to  follow 


42  Two  Russian  Reformers 

it.  Sanin,  however,  can  be  hard  enough  on  occa- 
sion, in  spite  of  that  inner  softness  of  his,  as  lie 
soon  proves.  They  were  lunching  together  out- 
side a  cafe — the  beautiful  Italian  girl,  Gemma, 
her  German  fiance,  her  brother,  and  Sanin  himself. 
A  drunken  German  officer  recognised  her  as  the 
daughter  of  a  confectioner  and,  swaggering  up  to 
the  table,  seized  a  rose  that  belonged  to  her  in  the 
presence  of  her  fiance.  Instantly  Sanin,  who  is 
not  her  fiance  at  all,  takes  up  the  challenge  and 
rebukes  the  officer's  insolence  with  all  the  courage 
of  youth  and  devoted  love.  A  duel  follows  as  a 
matter  of  course,  but  Turgenev  remains  a  remorse- 
lessly sincere  artist  who  is  incapable  of  sacrificing 
his  art  to  the  trumpet-call  of  the  noisy  romancers. 
It  is  life,  life,  life  that  he  gives  us  in  that  duel  scene 
in  the  fresh  morning,  as  the  doctor,  openly  bored, 
sits  yawning  on  the  grass  while  the  seconds  discuss 
the  preliminaries. 

Sanin  survives  the  foolish  duel,  and  now  there 
is  nothing  whatever  to  check  the  "  torrents  of 
spring  "  that  are  surging  in  his  heart.  He  loves 
this  beautiful  Italian  girl,  and  his  secret  escapes 
from  him  as  simply  and  with  as  inevitable  an 
accordance  with  nature  as  buds  burst  into  the 
larger  life.  Sanin  himself  at  this  time  "  lives 
like  a  plant,"  and  his  life  is  almost  as  free  from 
complexity.  Gemma  has  broken  with  her  German 
fiance  and  will  marry  him,  Sanin.  But  first  he 
will  return  to  Russia  and  sell  his  property.     It 


Turgenev  43 

Is  all  quite  simple,  for  he  is  his  own  master  and 
there  is  nothing  to  stand  between  him  and  the 
girl  he  loves.  Then  he  meets  the  ridiculous  and 
clumsy  Ippolit  Polozov,  who  suggests  that  his  rich 
wife  might  purchase  Sanin's  property.  So  Sanin 
drives  with  him  to  discuss  the  matter  with  Maria 
Nikolaevna,  who  is  half  a  gipsy  and  possesses  that 
daring  and  alluring  beauty  which  works  such 
havoc  in  the  romances  of  Turgenev.  It  is  the  old, 
old  story.  The  good  love  is  being  poisoned  by  the 
evil  passion.  The  spell  of  youth  and  goodness  and 
freshness  has  been  exchanged  for  the  spell  of  the 
flesh.  Sanin's  romance  is  over,  and  he  sends  a 
lying  letter  of  excuse  to  his  fiancee  and  in  the  end 
accompanies  Maria  Nikolaevna  to  Paris.  Years 
afterwards  he  learns  that  Gemma  had  gone  to  the 
United  States.  He  writes  to  her,  and  she  sends 
him  a  photograph  which  seems  to  be  the  Gemma 
of  twenty  years  ago.  It  is  the  photograph  of  her 
eldest  child,  and  she  herself  has  been  happily 
married  across  the  Atlantic  during  these  long 
years  of  his  disillusion. 

There  is  in  this  second  book  of  youth  the  same 
regret,  the  same  sense  of  a  missed  happiness  as 
in  the  first.  But  at  least  it  has  not  been  poisoned, 
like  the  first,  at  its  very  source.  One  feels  here 
that  hope  and  happiness  and  love  are  not  im- 
possible illusions,  and  the  "  might  have  been  " 
at  least  is  substituted  for  the  implacable  "  non 
concessere  dei." 


CHAPTER    II 

AT  the  age  of  twenty-three  Turgenev  very 
nearly  became  a  University  professor.  At 
this  time  he  seems  to  have  been  completely 
Germanised.  Afterwards,  like  Heine,  he  was  to 
surrender  himself  to  the  influence  of  Paris,  but 
in  both  cases  of  apparent  foreign  absorption  the 
novelist  remained  entirely  Russian.  It  was  only 
in  an  outer  sense  that  he  became  modified  by  the 
deep  dreams  of  German  philosophy  or  the  lucid 
serenity  of  French  taste.  In  an  inner  sense  the 
German  influence  both  at  Moscow  and  Berlin 
implanted  in  Turgenev  not  so  much  the  erudition 
of  the  savant  as  the  seeds  of  idealism  which  were 
to  find  expression  here  and  there  through  all  his 
work,  but  particularly  in  two  books,  the  one  im- 
pregnated with  apathy  and  despair  and  the  other 
illumined  by  at  least  a  recognition  of  the  higher 
hope. 

As  one  reads  the  novels  of  Turgenev  one  finds 
oneself  over  and  over  again  in  some  heated  and 
crowded  room  where,  over  a  samovar,  young  men 
with  white  eager  faces  are  clamouring  over  ideas 
with  as  passionate  a  persistence  as  brokers  clamour 

44 


Turgenev  45 

over  securities.     What  is  the  meaning  of  life  ? 
they  ask,  and  at  any  moment,  it  would  seem,  each 
is  willing  to  cast  his  individual  existence  into  the 
melting-pot  of  destiny.     Surely  these  people  will 
save  Russia  !     With  a  heart  beating  like  this  the 
great   silent   country   cannot   remain   always   in- 
animate and  cold.     Yes,   they  are  speaking  for 
Russia,  and  their  words  vibrate  with  the  noble 
rhythm  of  revolt  and  the  straining  faces  are  lit  up 
by  sunken,  tameless  eyes.     In  spite  of  their  exalta- 
tion the  picture  is  so  real  that  we  seem  to  be  in 
the  room  with  them  without  the  consciousness  of 
having  been   ushered   into  it.     A   sentence  here 
and  there,  a  trick  of  manner,  this  or  that  piece  of 
shabby  furniture,  mentioned  apparently  at  random 
with   that    abhorrence    of   the   over-emphasis   of 
detail  which  Turgenev  could  never  conceal  even 
from  Emile  Zola — the  picture  is  bitten  in  before 
your  eyes  so  easily,  so  apparently  lazily,  that  you 
are  oblivious  of  the  concealment  of  art.     You  are 
in  the  room  with  the  students,  but  now  Turgenev's 
manner  differentiates  itself  from  the  more  familiar 
methods.     You  are  in  the  room  with  them,  but 
you  are  not  exactly  one  of  them.     You  do  not  mix 
with  them  as  you  do,  for  example,  with  the  friends 
that  George  Eliot  makes  for  you.      Between  you 
and  the  creations  of  Turgenev  there  is  always 
a  slight  veil,  whether  of  irony  or  of  an  instinctive 
dislike  of  intimacy.     These  people  can  never  be 
your  intimates,  any  more  than  they  are  the  in- 


46  Two  Russian  Reformers 

timates  of  the  author  himself.  You  are,  in  fact, 
a  watcher  just  as  he  is  always  a  watcher.  For, 
the  suspicion  of  Turgenev  is  at  work  even  in  this 
atmosphere  of  generous  illusion.  And  gradually 
you  begin  to  divine  the  difference  between  the 
word  and  the  deed,  the  expression  of  the  will  in 
rhetoric  and  the  expression  of  the  will  in  action. 
Something  cold  and  sinister  comes  between  you 
and  these  young  men,  just  as  there  is  something 
repellent  between  them  and  the  master  who  has 
flung  them  into  life.  He,  too,  is  listening  to  their 
souls,  but  he  cannot  believe  in  their  message. 
Some  of  them,  the  tricksters,  do  not  believe  in  it 
themselves.  Others,  the  martyrs,  will  scrawl  the 
message  in  their  own  heart's  blood.  Tricksters 
and  martyrs  alike,  they  talk  on  and  on  and  on, 
but  their  voices  will  never  penetrate  into  the 
desolate  distances  of  the  steppes,  and  Turgenev 
suspects  them  always  of  an  impotence  which 
they  have  forgotten  during  this  exaltation  of  the 
nerves. 

In  his  student  days,  however,  Turgenev  him- 
self had  shared  these  illusions,  and  he  is  never 
wholly  ironical,  except  perhaps  in  "  Smoke," 
when  describing  these  endless  Russian  talks  which 
are  so  conspicuous  in  "  Dimitri  Rudin."  At 
Berlin  Turgenev  made  the  acquaintance  of  a 
fellow  student  named  Michel  Bakounine,  who 
afterwards  became  an  anarchist.  He  endeavoured 
to  form  the  young  Turgenev  in  his  own  opinions. 


Turgfenev  47 

and  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  appears  as  that 
saddest  of  all  the  despairing  heroes  of  Turgenev, 
Dimitri  Rudin.  Rudin  is  doubtless  Bakounine, 
so  expressively,  with  that  ruthless  watchfulness  of 
his,  does  the  novelist  insinuate  certain  external 
touches  by  which  his  old  comrade  can  be  recog- 
nised. But  in  Rudin  there  is  also  not  a  little 
of  Turgenev  himself,  not  the  Sanin  who  "  lived 
like  a  plant,"  but  the  enthusiast  for  Goethe  and 
Schiller  and  all  the  apostles  of  the  larger  life  of 
the  soul.  Self-portraiture  unquestionably  creeps 
in,  but  even  in  this,  the  same  cold,  questioning 
suspicion  is  at  work.  For,  Turgenev,  if  he  sus- 
pected others,  was  no  less  suspicious  of  himself. 
More  than  once  the  Slav  dreamer  of  reality  hinted 
at  this  attitude  of  self-criticism.  On  one  occa- 
sion Polonski  found  him  on  the  verge  of  despair. 
"  Tell  me  my  name  in  six  letters,"  exclaimed 
Turgenev:  "it  is  trouss  (poltroon)." 

That,  of  course,  was  but  the  exaggeration  of  a 
mood,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  even  in 
these  early  days  the  novelist  was  as  much  inclined 
to  mock  himself  as  he  was  to  mock  other  people. 
For  the  rest,  he  was  genuinely  kind-hearted,  and 
became  a  benefactor  to  his  poor  literary  friends, 
although  he  was  not  rich  enough  to  fill  the  role 
of  Maecenas.  It  was  at  this  period  of  his  life  that 
he  came  permanently  under  the  influence  of 
women  of  the  world,  who  were,  he  confessed,  the 
only  women  who  could  inspire  him.     The  con- 


48  Two  Russian  Reformers 

fession  is  interesting,  because  his  heroines  are 
almost  invariably  ingenues,  and  when  he  intro- 
duces a  woman  of  the  world,  whether  as  Maria 
Nikolaevna  in  a  modified  sense  or  Irene  in  "Smoke" 
in  a  highly  developed  sense,  she  brings  with  her 
inevitably  the  atmosphere  of  destruction.  There 
was  a  woman  of  the  people,  however,  for  whom 
he  experienced  a  passing  passion,  and  once  he 
asked  her  what  she  would  like  him  to  give  her  as 
a  present.  She  replied  that  she  would  like  some 
soap,  so  that  her  hands  might  be  delicate  for  her 
lover's  lips  to  kiss.  Turgenev  recalled  the  little 
incident  at  the  Magny  restaurant  with  that 
freshness  of  memory  which  seemed  actually  to 
visualise  before  these  fatigued  men  of  the  world 
a  poor  serf  girl  pleading  for  some  little  hint  of 
the  beauty  of  life,  pleading  that  she  might  appear 
to  her  lover  even  for  a  passing  hour  like  those 
others  !  Her  identity  is  uncertain,  but  it  was  at 
about  this  time  that  the  novelist  met  the  mother 
of  his  daughter  who  was  afterwards  educated  in 
Paris  under  the  supervision  of  Madame  Viardot. 

It  was  in  this  year,  1843,  that  he  met  the  critic 
Bielinski,  who  was  in  great  poverty  and  already 
the  victim  of  phthisis.  He,  like  Turgenev,  was 
convinced  that  Western  civilisation  was  necessary 
to  Russia,  though  he  admired  profoundly,  as  did 
the  novelist  in  spite  of  all  his  criticism  of  his 
compatriots,  the  Russian  soul.  There  were  endless 
conversations,    Russian    conversations,    between 


Turgencv  49 

them.  "  What !  "  exclaimed  BieUnski  on  one  occa- 
sion after  a  discussion  of  six  hours,  "  we  do  not 
know  yet  if  God  exists,  and  you  wish  to  dine ! " 

In  this  same  year  Turgenev  met  the  person 
who  was  to  influence  his  Ufe  far  more  profoundly 
than  the  Russian  critic  wlio  first  welcomed  him 
into  the  ranks  of  literature.  In  1843  Malibran's 
sister,  Pauline  Garcia,  came  to  sing  in  St.  Peters- 
burg for  the  first  time.  From  the  very  first 
moment  Turgenev  appears  to  have  become  her 
slave.  He  speaks  about  her  to  everyone,  even 
to  his  mother,  who  becomes  uneasy  and  goes  to 
hear  "  cette  maudite  bohemienne  "  sing  on  her 
visit  to  Moscow.  Turgenev,  in  short,  is  as  pos- 
sessed by  this  artist  as  any  one  of  his  own  stricken 
heroes.  In  his  exaltation  he  describes  to  Bielinski 
the  ecstasy  of  the  moment  in  w^hich  the  singer 
passed  a  perfumed  handkerchief  across  his  fore- 
head. In  1847  she  had  become  Madame  Viardot, 
and  Turgenev  went  to  Europe  in  her  train.  At 
Berlin,  however,  he  deserted  the  Viardots  and 
went  in  search  of  Bielinski  at  Stettin  in  order  to 
take  the  dying  critic  to  the  waters  of  Salzbrunn  in 
Silesia.  The  old  discussions  were  immediately 
resumed  between  the  two  friends,  but  after  a  few 
weeks  Turgenev  suddenly  disappeared.  "  The 
devil  alone  knows  where  he's  gone,"  writes 
Bielinski,  but  at  St.  Petersburg  they  said  that  he 
was  once  more  in  the  diva's  train.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  he  was  sometimes  with  the  Viardots  and 


50  Two  Russian  Reformers 

sometimes  quite  alone.  In  1848  he  visits  France 
for  the  first  time,  and  his  impressions  are  by  no 
means  enthusiastic.  **  It  is  decidedly  not  beauti- 
ful," he  wrote  on  arriving  at  Lyons  in  the  same 
year.  During  the  absence  of  the  Viardots  he 
determined  to  learn  the  diva's  language,  and 
steeped  himself  in  Calderon,  after  which  he  plunged 
into  the  French  classics  and  was  astonished  at  the 
subtleties  of  Pascal's  "Provengales."  Among  the 
moderns  George  Sand  especially  appealed  to  him — 
George  Sand,  who  wrote  among  so  many  other 
fragments  of  wisdom,  ''  Pauline  Garcia- Viardot, 
.  .  .  le  plus  beau  genie  de  femme  de  notre  epoque." 
But  on  the  whole  Turgenev,  with  a  curious  mixture 
of  luminous  vision  and  microscopic  analysis,  was 
dissatisfied  with  French  life  and  thought  and  with 
his  own  life  in  France.  Years  before  at  Petersburg 
people  had  noticed  the  odd  pranks  of  the  Russian 
novelist.  At  Paris  they  were  to  become  almost 
abnormal.  It  is  recorded  in  Polonski's  "  Sou- 
venirs," for  example,  that  during  this  period  he 
was  frequently  seized  with  fits  of  spleen.  Once, 
during  an  attack  of  this  kind  at  Paris,  he  made 
himself  a  high  pointed  cap  out  of  a  blind  torn 
from  a  window,  and  decked  with  this  cap  he  placed 
himself  in  a  corner  with  his  nose  to  the  wall  and 
waited  until  the  mood  had  passed.  Often,  it 
seems,  he  had  recourse  to  this  strange  treatment 
for  those  crises  des  nerfs  which  were  in  such  violent 
contrast  to  the  habitual  suavity  of  his  genius. 


^4  -"''  - 


AVENUE    AT    SPASSKoii 


51 


Turgenev  53 

In  1849  he  writes  from  Courtavenel,  Madame 
Viar  dot's  country-house  in  Brie  :  "I  have  a  great 
deal  of  time  here,  and  I  make  use  of  it  by  doing 
the  most  perfectly  useless  things.  From  time  to 
time  this  is  necessary  for  me.  Without  this  safety- 
valve  I  should  be  in  danger  of  becoming  very 
stupid  one  day  for  good  and  all." 

But  his  old  love  for  and  intimate  sympathy  with 
nature — mingled  with  a  certain  involuntary  sus- 
picion— continued  to  survive.  At  Ville-d'Avray, 
in  1848,  as  long  before  in  the  garden  of  Spasskoe 
or  in  the  Black  Forest  of  his  later  student  days, 
he  was  unable  "  to  see  without  emotion  a  branch 
covered  with  foliage  outline  itself  clearly  against 
the  blue  sky."  He  had  not  altogether  outgrown 
that  Sanin  who  "  lived  like  a  plant  and  had  no 
idea  that  one  could  live  otherwise."  He  perceived 
with  all  the  old  freshness  of  insight  the  charm  of 
nature,  but  he  perceived  it  as  the  result  of  im- 
placable and  mysterious  forces  without  pity  or 
concern  for  himself  or  any  other  unit  of  the  human 
race.  The  gentle  beliefs  and  confidences  of  his 
temperament  slipped  away  from  this  watcher 
who  had  come  as  close  to  nature  as  to  man.  The 
cautious  ironical  suspicion  of  life  deepened  into 
something  more  sinister.  The  master  of  irony 
became  conscious  of  life  as  a  brooding,  threatening 
envelopment  under  whose  hovering  shadow  only 
children  can  laugh  and  play  in  tranquillity.  It 
seems  as  though  there  had  reached  this  impassive 

4 


54  Two  Russian  Reformers 

brooder  vibrations  from  other  planes  of  being, 
vibrations  to  which  ordinary  human  nerves  are 
impervious.  Certainly  Turgenev,  who  sought  al- 
ways tranquillity,  was  haunted  during  a  seemingly 
uneventful  career  by  menaces  and  doubts  with 
which  the  ordinary  man  is  wholly  unconcerned. 

In  the  meantime  things  had  been  happening 
in  his  own  country.  Dostoievski  had  just  been 
sent  to  Siberia,  and  Bielinski  had  only  escaped 
the  same  fate  by  death.  Turgenev's  mother  was 
ill,  and  in  1850  the  novelist  finally  decided  to 
return  to  Russia.  Varvara  Petrovna  grew  rapidly 
worse,  and  her  character  was  but  little  modified 
by  the  approach  of  death.  Turgenev  had  no 
illusions  as  to  her  want  of  sympathy  for  her 
children.  She  had  quarrelled  with  him  before, 
and  even  at  the  very  end,  as  we  have  seen,  she 
refused  to  be  reconciled.  He  did  not  arrive  at  her 
house  until  she  was  alreadv  dead,  and  she  had  left 
for  him  no  message  either  of  forgiveness  or  remorse. 

On  his  mother's  death  the  novelist  found  himself 
a  man  of  independent  means,  and  this  fact  was 
of  considerable  importance  to  his  whole  future 
development.  It  meant  for  him  artistic  inde- 
pendence, and  it  was  only  in  art  that  Turgenev 
was  not  a  dilettante.  His  **  Annals  of  a  Sports- 
man "  appeared  in  1852,  and  by  this  book  the 
novelist  enfranchised  millions  of  human  beings. 
But  when  it  came  to  personal  participation  in 
political  action,  his  role,  though  he  rather  prided 


Turgenev  55 

himself  on  it,  was  insignificant.  He  was,  at  all 
events,  imprisoned,  and  the  incident  gave  him 
pleasure  and  even  amusement,  for  on  one  occa- 
sion, while  drinking  a  bottle  of  champagne  with 
his  gaoler,  that  worthy  official  was  good  enough  to 
click  glasses  with  him  "  to  Robespierre  !  "  In  the 
same  year  he  commenced  "  Rudin,"  the  book  of 
all  others  in  which  the  political  and  philosophic 
enthusiasms  that  roused  him  at  Moscow  and  St. 
Petersburg  and  Berlin  were  to  find  utterance.  In 
this  book  all  those  interminable  conversations 
with  Bielinski  renewed  themselves,  and  if  there  are 
irony  and  disillusion  in  the  volume  every  page  of 
it  is  none  the  less  impregnated  with  the  saddest 
of  all  regrets,  the  regret  for  the  generous  dream  to 
which  one's  heart  will  no  longer  respond. 

The  following  year  was  marked  by  the  Crimean 
War,  which  meant  for  Turgenev  nothing  more  or 
less  than  the  discovery  of  Count  Tolstoy.  "  Have 
you  read  his  '  Sebastopol '  ?  "  he  writes  in  1855  to 
Serge  Aksakof.  "As  for  me,  I  read  it  and  I  cried 
hurrah  and  I  drank  the  author's  health."  Some 
little  time  afterwards  he  met  the  future  author  of 
"  Anna  Karanina."  From  the  very  first  their 
personalities  grated  on  each  other,  and  it  is  this 
grating  of  personalities  that  accounts  for  that 
exploited  quarrel  which  so  nearly  led  to  the 
exchange  of  pistol-shots  between  the  two  great 
Russian  authors.  The  immediate  cause  of  this 
quarrel  was  a  contemptuous  comment  by  Tolstoy 


56  Two  Russian  Reformers 

on  Turgenev's  education  of  his  daughter,  but  the 
real  cause  was  undoubtedly  the  latent  antagonism 
of  two  temperaments,  each  after  its  own  fashion 
peifectly  sincere.  The  antagonism  of  tempera- 
ment would  also  explain  that  posthumous  quarrel 
between  the  author  of  "  Smoke  "  and  the  author 
of  "  Sapho."  Turgenev,  however,  as  yet  knew 
little  of  Alphonse  Daudet  or  any  of  the  other 
guests  at  those  famous  dinners  at  Magny.  But 
he  was  already  becoming  weary  of  Russia,  and  in 
1856  he  crossed  the  frontier  never  to  return  for 
any  length  of  time. 

For  the  next  eight  years  his  life  was  typical  of 
"  la  nature  errante  de  I'homme  russe,"  but  he 
did  not  travel  solely  for  pleasure  or  even  for 
distraction.  He  had  come  to  Europe  to  consult 
specialists,  and  they  sent  him  in  search  of  health 
in  all  directions.  His  letters  at  this  time  were 
preoccupied  with  the  state  of  his  health.  He 
was  haunted  by  the  fear  of  becoming  a  physical 
wreck,  and  his  friends  were  resigned  to  the  proba- 
bility of  his  premature  death.  All  over  Europe 
he  sought  for  that  illusion  which  is  called  the 
peace  of  the  soul,  but  always  it  escaped  him  even 
when  it  seemed  most  close  at  hand.  In  Russia 
he  had  sighed  for  the  increased  vitality  and  mental 
stimulus  of  Europe.  In  France  he  longed  for 
the  garden  of  Spasskoe  and  the  languor  of  his 
native  Russian  steppes.  It  was  only  for  the  sake 
of  his  daughter  and  the  Viardots  that  he  con- 


Turgencv  57 

sented  to  remain.  The  French  authors  at  this 
time  bored  him,  from  Victor  Hugo  and  Lamartine 
to  George  Sand  and  Alexandre  Dumas.  He 
protested  against  the  materiahsm  of  the  French, 
against  the  animal  delight  in  massed  humanity 
which  is  so  conspicuous  in  the  genius  of  Balzac. 
With  his  head  the  Russian  novelist  might  welcome 
the  seething  of  European  ideas,  but  in  his  heart 
there  was  always  a  nostalgia  which  he  himself 
condemned  as  illusive.  On  the  one  hand  he  was 
deracine  and  in  need  of  association  with  the  national 
influences  of  his  race  ;  on  the  other  hand  he 
was  emancipated  and  no  longer  capable  of  sharing 
the  old  national  aspirations.  The  two  Turgenevs, 
in  short,  were  fretting  against  each  other,  each 
longing  for  some  resting-place  of  the  soul  in  which 
the  other  could  place  no  confidence.  For,  at 
this  period,  Turgenev  was  a  wanderer  in  a  deeper 
sense  than  that  of  physical  distance,  and  all  these 
longings  blended  mockingly  and  yet  sadly  with 
the  idealism  of  the  early  student  days  which  finds 
expression  in  two  books  :  "  Rudin/^th^  book_oL 
.despair,  and  "  Liza,"  the  book  of  renunciation. 

In  one  of  his  letters  Turgenev  alludes  to  the 
Russians  as  "  the  strangest,  the  most  astonishing 
people  on  the  face  of  the  earth."  In  "  Rudin  " 
he  gives  us_thejv;ery  core  of  the  Russian  character. 
The  plot,  as  usual,  is  one  of  almost  disdainful 
simplicity.  A  tired,  middle-aged  man  who  is  a 
brilliant  talker  is  received  as  a  tame  cat  in  a  more 


58  Two  Russian  Reformers 

or  less  luxurious  country-house.  Everybody  is 
dazzled  by  his  rhetoric,  and  the  mistress  of  the 
house  encourages  him  to  talk,  for  these  fine 
phrases  and  sentiments  are  really  a  relief  from 
the  boredom  of  country  life.  When  Rudin  has 
stopped  talking  other  people  discuss  general  pro- 
positions in  eager  words.  Only  the  daughter 
of  the  house  remains  silent  in  the  background. 
On  the  surface  that  is  all. 

But  underneath  the  surface  what  depths  of 
hope  and  hopelessness,  of  steadfastness  and  shame 
are  to  be  found  in  this  story  of  a  failure  beyond 
the  remorse  of  words !  Rudin  is  absolutely 
natural.  One  sees  him  enter  the  house,  and  from 
that  moment  he  takes  possession  of  it,  not  as 
an  actor  takes  possession  of  the  stage  but  as  a 
vdreamer  wins  the  hearts  of  those  who  remember 
their  youth.  He  is  not  a  conscious  impostor  ; 
there  is  nothing  of  Tartuffe  about  him,  and  still 
less  of  Pecksniff.  He  talks  of  noble  endeavour 
not  in  order  to  deceive  others  but  because  he 
wishes  to  be  thrilled  by  it  himself.  Devoid  of 
will-power,  he  wishes  to  will  intensely.  For  the 
rest,  he  plays  upon  the  formless  dreams  of  youth 
as  an  artist  upon  some  delicate  and  exquisite 
musical  instrument.  He  points  always  upward 
towards  the  great  heights,  but  he  is  paralysed 
by  the  very  thought  of  scaling  the  least  of  them. 
"He  has  enthusiasm,"  says  Lezhnyov  of  him; 
"  the  coldness  is  in  his  blood — that  is  not  his 


Turgcnev  59 

fault — and  not  in  his  head.  He  is  not  an  actor, 
as  I  called  him,  not  a  cheat,  nor  a  scoundrel ;  he 
lives  at  other  people's  expense  not  like  a  swindler, 
but  like__a_child/'  But  Rudin  is  not  wholly 
explained  by  this  estimate.  He  is  not  in  the 
least  a  Horace  Skimpole.  He  is  a  creature  driven, 
as  it  were,  by  some  hidden  mechanism  to  diffuse 
his  energy  without  reference  to  the  concentration 
demanded  by  action.  He  is  a  victim  rather  than  , 
an  impostor,  and  at  his  worst  he  is  nobler  than  ' 
many  who  condemn  him.  Nobody  can  condemn 
him  more  than  he  condemns  himself  when  he  half 
guesses  his  own  petrifying  secret  :  "A  strange, 
almost  farcical  fate  is  mine.  I  would  devote  myself 
— eagerly,  wholly — to  some  cause ;  and  I  cannot 
devote  myself.  I  shall  end  by  sacrificing  myself 
to  some  folly  or  other  in  which  I  shall  not  even 
believe."  It  was  only  too  true;  but  first  he  was 
to  play  upon  that  most  subtle  and  mysterious 
instrument  of  all,  a  young  girl's  heart. 

No  heroine  could  be  at  once  more  enigmatic 
and  more  candid  than  Natalya,  the  silent  listener 
who  waits  in  the  background  for  this  man  who 
is  speaking  so  eloquently  of  liberty  and  life. 
These  Russian  girls  in  the  novels  of  Turgenev  are 
not  waiting  for  a  Prince  Charming  to  win  them 
by  some  flattering  caress.  They  are  not  waiting 
for  someone  to  lure  them  into  a  world  of  romance 
to  the  accompaniment  of  dream  music.  On  the 
contrary,  they  await  a  leader  who  is  engaged  in  the 


6o  Two  Russian  Reformers 

actual  struggle  with  misery  and  slavery  and  pain. 
To  him,  if  only  he  is  the  right  man,  they  will 
gladly  dedicate  their  lives,  sacrificing  all  their 
guarded  youthfulness  and  their  protected  beauty. 
For  they  are  willing,  oh,  so  willing,  to  follow 
the  hard  road,  the  dangerous  road,  the  road  that 
winds  desolately  away  from  home  and  friends 
and  the  familiar  safety.  Patiently  they  wait 
for  him  who  will  lead.  And  so,  while  Rudin 
talks  in  the  drawing-room  to  the  admiration  of 
the  mother,  the  daughter  believes  that  she  has 
found  at  last  the  master  who  will  reveal  to  her 
the  heroic  promptings  of  her  own  heart.  It 
matters  nothing  to  her  that  the  man  is  elderly 
and  poor,  a  baffled,  battered  person  who  has  won 
none  of  the  prizes  of  life.  She  believes  in  him, 
and  she  shares  passionately  his  great  moments. 
It  is  fatally  easy  for  him  to  play  flexibly  on  these 
sensitive  heart-strings.  He  talks  to  her  of  youth 
and  poetry  and  love  and  the  glorious  revolt  against 
the  bondage  of  the  soul.  She  believes  that  his 
heart  is  warm  and  living  as  her  own,  and  that  it, 
too,  vibrates  to  the  golden  rhythm  of  his  words. 
He  speaks  to  her  of  love.  Of  course  he  loves  her  ; 
he  is  not  so  dead  to  the  very  ashes  of  illusion  as 
not  to  love  this  beautiful  young  girl  who  believes 
in  him  when  he  can  no  longer  believe  in  himself. 
Of  course  he  loves  her,  and  in  her  turn  the  girl 
believes  in  him  as  the  master  of  her  destiny. 
But  very  soon  her  mother  hears  of  this  un-^ 


Turgenev  6i 

expected  idyl.  She  is  naturally  irritated,  and 
tells  her  daughter  that  it  is  out  of  the  question 
for  her  to  marry  a  bohemian  outcast  like  Rudin. 
Natalya  does  not  hesitate  for  a  single  instant 
between  authority  and  love.  She  is  willing  to 
follow  Rudin,  the  wanderer,  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth.  He  is  her  master ;  let  him  lead  the  way 
and  she  will  follow  it.  Let  him  declare  at  once 
what  they  must  do.  "  What  we  must  do  ?  " 
replies  Rudin  :  "of  course  submit."  Then  the 
girl  understands.  It  has  all  been  sound,  just  the 
clatter  of  words,  that  has  stirred  so  mysteriously 
the  deep,  unutterable  secrets  of  her  heart.  Rudin 
is  only  the  man  who  submits.  After  all,  that  is 
her  hero,  the  man  who  submits.  She  is  sorry 
for  him  because  he  is  not  what  he  might  have 
been.  She  is  sorry  for  him  for  being  only  the 
imitation  of  something  noble  and  true.  She 
turns  away  from  him,  as  so  many  others  have 
turned  away  from  him  and  will  yet  turn  away 
from  him  again. 

But  Turgenev  does  not  belabour  the  unfortunate 
Rudin  after  the  fashion  of  the  English  and,  in 
another  sense,  the  French  novelists.  Rudin,  victim 
though  he  be  of  his  own  inherent  want  of  will,  is 
none  the  less  a  factor  in  this  too  patient  and 
voiceless  Russia.  There  is  something  noble  in  his 
heart  that  is  independent  of  the  rhetorical  nobility 
of  his  words.  He  who  has  known  hardship  does 
not  cling  to  the  soft  places  when  he  happens  upon 


62  Two  Russian  Reformers 

them.  He  is  capable  of  becoming  weary  of  the 
kindness  of  the  powerful.  Half  dazed  though 
he  is  by  his  own  rhetoric,  he  is  at  least  willing  to 
drift  upon  any  wave  of  destiny.  He  is  utterly 
incapable  of  becoming  an  approved  parasite,  and 
parasites  are  the  first  to  condemn  him,  Pigasov, 
for  example,  says  of  him:  "  If  he  begins  to  abuse 
himself,  he  humbles  himself  into  the  dust :  come, 
one  thinks,  he  will  never  dare  to  face  the  light  of 
day  after  that.  Not  a  bit  of  it  !  It  only  cheers 
him  up,  as  if  he  treated  himself  to  a  glass  of  grog." 
That  is  all  that  Pigasov  can  say  for  him,  but  then 
Pigasov  is  a  man  who  accepts  bribes.  Turgenev 
does  not  condemn  Rudin  in  that  way.  For 
Turgenev  the  poor,  baffled,  shabby  figure  recalls  all 
those  eager  memories  of  the  student  days  which 
even  his  own  habitual  irony  could  not  wholly  rob 
of  their  charm.  Rudin  revives  those  breathless 
conversations  in  which  young  men  declaimed 
about  the  meaning  of  life,  the  meaning  of  love, 
declaimed  about  beauty  and  passion  and  art, 
about  anything  in  short  except  selfishness,  avarice, 
exclusion,  and  that  withered  and  withering  pride 
which  narrows  for  ever  the  human  soul.  Of 
those  dwarfing  influences,  at  least,  poor  Rudin 
knew  nothing ;  he  was  never  to  learn  them. 
Fantastic  always,  as  much  in  his  sincere  desire 
to  believe  as  in  the  rhetorical  expression  of  belief, 
he  dies,  as  he  had  prophesied,  in  a  cause  for  which 
he  has  no  spark  of  enthusiasm.     A  worn,  grey- 


Turgenev  63 

haired,  forlorn  figure  raises  a  flag  over  the  barri- 
cades of  Paris,  and  is  instantly  shot  down.  To 
his  comrades  he  is  known  as  the  Polonais,  but  he 
is  a  Russian  and  his  name  is  Dmitri  Rudin. 

The  dispiriting  effect  of  this  sombre  and 
beautiful  story  is  at  least  half  dispelled  by  what 
one  might  call  its  companion  volume,  "  Liza, 
or  A  Nest  of  Nobles."  There  is  much  of 
Turgenev's  early  manhood  in  Rudin,  but  in 
Lavretski  there  is,  as  it  were,  the  completion, 
the  fulfilment  of  what  the  first  years  of  maturity 
have  meant  to  the  Russian  novelist.  One  must 
not  accept  Lavretski  as  meaning  for  Turgenev 
what  Levin,  for  example,  means  for  Tolstoy. 
But  at  least  Lavretski  represents  a  Russian 
gentleman  who,  after  travelling  in  the  west,  has 
determined  to  settle  down  in  his  native  country 
and  make  the  best  use  of  his  acquired  knowledge 
for  the  benefit  of  his  native  Russia.  So  unpre- 
tentious is  he  that  Turgenev's  irony  passes  harm- 
lessly over  him.  He  is,  indeed,  the  very  anti- 
thesis of  Rudin.  He  is  not  at  all  talkative,  but  he 
is  capable  of  making  good  his  words  in  action. 
He  is  sincere  and  incapable  of  willingly  breaking 
his  faith.  But  it  is  not  words  alone  that  can  play 
with  human  destiny,  as  Liza,  the  young  girl  who 
is  waiting  for  him,  just  as  Natalya  was  waiting  for 
Rudin,  discovers  to  her  cost.  She,  too,  is  search- 
ing for  the  noblest.  She,  too,  is  simple  and  kind, 
but  with  depths  in  her  nature  that  cannot  reveal 


64  Two  Russian  Reformers 

themselves  in  facile  confessions.  And  Lavretski, 
like  Turgenev  himself,  recognises  the  immense 
potentiality,  the  immense  significance  of  all  the 
silence  and  tenderness  and  fidelity  that  this  quiet 
unassuming  Liza  possesses  as  the  birthright  of  her 
race. 

Unlike  Sanin  on  the  one  hand  or  Rudin  on  the 
other,  Lavretski  is  sure  of  himself.  He  knows 
what  he  wants.  He  knows  what  is  the  best  amid 
the  meretricious  glitter  of  more  showy  promises. 
But  life  sweeps  him  aside  just  as  easily,  just  as 
ruthlessly,  as  it  does  Sanin  or  Rudin.  Years 
before,  having  made  an  unfortunate  marriage,  he 
had  separated  from  his  wife  who  had  been  un- 
faithful to  him.  And  now,  just  as  he  is  learning 
to  love  Liza,  he  receives  a  Parisian  newspaper  in 
which  there  is  a  rather  florid  announcement  of 
his  wife's  death.  He  is  free.  At  last  he  is  free. 
Already  something  of  the  aroma  of  his  secret  has 
escaped  from  him.  Already,  without  words,  his 
soul  has  communicated  with  Liza's  soul ;  the 
divined  secret  can  now  be  uttered  honourably. 
In  this  state  of  mind  he  returns  to  his  house,  and  is 
startled  by  the  scent  of  patchouli.  His  wife  has 
come  back  to  beg  for  forgiveness,  and  has  brought 
her  little  daughter  with  her  to  plead  for  her. 
There  had  been  an  error  in  that  Parisian  news- 
paper. His  wife  is  alive  and  well,  and  anxious,  oh, 
so  anxious,  to  be  forgiven  and  to  forget.  Penitence 
and  patchouli  blend  in  the  easily  spoken  appeal. 


a\\\ 


COUNT    I.EO    TOLSTOY. 


235 


Turgcnev  65 

The  very  soul  of  the  woman  is  rouged,  and  Lav- 
retski  reads  it  as  easily  as  one  reads  a  rouged  face 
under  a  hard  light.  Lavretski  knows  her,  and  all 
these  words  mean  nothing  at  all  to  him.  But 
to  the  outside  world  she  is  not  in  the  least  the 
conventionalised  erring  woman.  It  is  not  the 
general  type,  but  a  strongly  individualised  woman 
who  is  dragging  the  suffocating  memories  of  the 
boulevards  into  the  lonely  longings  of  the  steppes. 
Of  course  Liza  is  sacrificed.  The  frou-frou  of 
this  scented  w^oman  brushes  aside  all  the  bloom 
of  her  delicate  and  almost  wordless  love.  Lavretski 
refuses  to  live  with  his  wife,  but  Liza  is  lost  to 
him  for  ever.  She  enters  a  convent  and  he  sees 
her  only  once  again.  But  in  that  last  meeting  all 
the  charm  of  renunciation  and  regret  is  stamped 
upon  a  love  scene  in  which  no  word  is  spoken,  in 
which  only  a  glance  conveys  the  message  of  an 
inalienable  tenderness. 

Lavretski  is  exceptional  among  the  heroes  of 
Turgenev  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  Slavophil  as  opposed 
to  the  westernised  Panshin.  Asked  what  he 
means  to  do  now  that  he  has  returned  from  Europe, 
Lavretski  answers,  quite  in  the  manner  of  Tolstoy's 
heroes,  "  Till  the  soil  and  try  to  till  it  as  well 
as  possible."  But  he  is,  after  all,  a  very  mild 
Slavophil.  It  is  in  Liza  rather  than  in  liim  that 
one  seems  to  penetrate  into  depth  after  depth  of 
the  Russian  temperament.  She  is  close  to  the 
Russian  people  without  knowing  how  to  be  con- 


66  Two  Russian  Reformers 

descending  towards  them.  She  is  national  with- 
out proclaiming  it  in  phrases  :  "  The  Russian 
turn  of  mind  gladdened  her."  She  is  essentially 
the  elder  sister  of  Natalya,  one  of  those  silent 
concentrated  beings  who  will  follow  steadfastly 
to  the  death  the  man  who  proclaims  himself  a 
leader  in  act  as  well  as  in  word.  Lavretski  was 
such  a  man,  and  there  is  not  in  this  book  the 
Anner  despair  and  dryness  of  disillusion  that  one 
•'finds  in  the  pages  of  "  Rudin." 

This  dryness  of  disillusion,  this  concrete  recog- 
/  nition  of  imposture  and  self-imposture  was  to 
/  persist  throughout  the  life  of  Turgenev.  But 
with  it,  permeating  it  and  redeeming  it,  there 
lingered  always  that  savour  of  caressing  regret 
which  makes  Liza  at  once  so  simple  and  so  un- 
forgettable. Turgenev  was  to  experience  to  satiety 
every  nuance  of  the  promise  and  the  despair  of 
passion,  but  he  was  also  to  preserve  the  freshness 
of  insight  which  was  his  precious  inheritance  from 
the  beginning.  Nobody  is  more  delicately  merci- 
ful than  he  when  he  is  probing  the  depths  of 
youth's  troubled  heart.  Here,  at  least,  there  is 
no  cause  for  that  hesitating  mockery  with  which 
he  so  often  chills  those  who  would  penetrate  too 
intimately  into  his  dream.  Here,  at  least,  there 
is  no  cause  for  that  gentle  pessimism  which  sur- 
rounds, as  with  a  nebula,  so  many  of  his  emotional 
creations.  In  the  heart  of  Turgenev  there  sur- 
vived to  the  very  end  two  Russian  figures,  each 


Turgenev  67 

^sombre^one  by  reason  of  an  inner  coldness  and 
the  other  by  reason  of  the  external  irony  of  life. 
These  figures  are  Rudin  and  Liza,  and  it  is  not  by 
accident  that  it  is  the  woman  who  expresses  that 
serene  confidence  in  goodness  by  which  one  of  the 
two  Turgenevs  was  always  haunted.  This  other 
Turgenev  was  at  no  time  a  prey  to  the  fatigue 
of  him  who  sees  too  clearly.  He  remembered 
always  that  a  woman's  love  is  wonderful  and 
strange,  and  he  who  had  analysed  so  pitilessly 
the^tormeiLted-rlietoric^-on-J^udin-'s-  lips  bowed 
humbly  before  the  candour  of  Liza's  eyes. 


CHAPTER    III 

MADAME  VIARDOT  gave  up  the  theatre  in 
1864  and  installed  herself  with  her  family 
in  Baden-Baden,  to  which  German  town, 
beloved  of  Russians,  she  was  followed  by  Ivan 
Turgenev.  At  first  he  took  a  small  house  of  only 
one  story  with  a  garden,  but  he  had  built  for 
himself  a  house  of  some  pretensions  also  with  a 
garden  and  some  beautiful  trees.  Here,  quite 
close  to  the  Viardots,  he  settled  down  in  1868  to 
continue  the  most  fruitful  period  of  his  literary 
life,  the  period  which  may  be  said  to  have  com- 
menced with  the  publication  of  "  Fathers  and 
Sons  "  in  i860. 

Baden-Baden  was  a  suitable  resting-place  after 
his  gipsy  wanderings,  and  here  he  began  to  con- 
centrate more  remorselessly  than  ever  his  sus- 
picious intelligence  upon  the  younger  generation 
of  Russia's  vanguard,  the  successors  of  Rudin  and 
Lavretski.  In  all  Europe  there  could  scarcely 
have  been  a  better  centre  for  this  than  Baden- 
Baden,  whose  "  Russian  tree  "  forms  the  pivot 
of  "  Smoke."  Here  he  studied  with  that  fixed 
equivocal  gaze  of  his — the  alert  gaze  of  a  dreamer, 

68 


Turgenev  69 

the  poetic  glance  of  an  analyst — those  emanci- 
pated talkers  who  proclaimed  themselves  the 
champions  of  Russia.  On  their  side  they  main- 
tained derisively  that  Turgenev  was  out  of  touch 
with  the  intellectual  life  of  the  younger  generation 
of  his  compatriots.  His  answers  to  this  charge, 
however,  were  given  in  three  books  of  varying 
shades  of  irony,  each  of  which,  without  passion 
and  without  malignity,  showed  how  he  could 
strike  if  he  had  the  will  to  display  such  futile 
force. 

In  the  meantime  his  external  life  flowed  by  in 
perfect  calm.  He  was  comparatively  happy,  for 
he  had  acquired  that  love  for  the  sameness  of  one 
day  with  another  which,  wanderer  though  he  had 
been  and  exile  though  he  continued  to  be,  he 
shared  with  his  future  friend,  Gustave  Flaubert. 
With  Madame  Viardot  he  would  enjoy  music,  and 
with  her  husband  he  would  enjoy  sport.  Naturally 
gossip  was  more  or  less  malignant  on  the  subject 
of  this  old  friendship,  but  to  gossip  Turgenev 
was  by  temperament  wholly  indifferent.  The  life 
suited  him,  giving  him  the  particular  phase  of 
exotic  domesticity  which  could  alone  satisfy 
his  difficult  and  yet  incongruously  simple  nature. 
Baden-Baden,  too,  supplied  him  with  those  cosmo- 
politan types  which  are  so  conspicuous  in  his 
novels.  Here  he  could  observe  all  manner  of  men 
and  women  equally  zealous  in  pursuit  of  excite- 
ment or  rest — foreigners  airing  or  dissimulating 

5 


70  Two  Russian  Reformers 

their  oddities,  Russians  furtively  imitating  the 
pecuharities  of  the  foreigners  they  condemned, 
Russians  preaching  freedom  while  their  pockets 
bulged  with  roubles  wrung  from  their  former 
serfs.  And  at  any  moment  in  this  fashionable 
European  resort  the  frou-frou  of  some  woman's 
skirts  might  revive  in  him  that  first  thrill  of 
memory  which  is  Turgenev's  substitute  for  roman- 
ticism. No  better  background,  indeed,  could  be 
imagined  for  his  peculiar  powers,  first  as  a 
student  of  the  younger  Russia  that  denied  him, 
and  secondly  as  a  searcher  for  those  ultimate 
secrets  of  the  human  heart  which  no  one,  perhaps, 
has  ever  shared  with  him. 

But  in  spite  of  this  outer  tranquillity  old  fears 
clung  to  him.  His  health  troubled  him  unceasingly, 
and  sometimes,  doubtless,  he  was  haunted  by 
nostalgia.  For,  after  all,  it  was  but  one  of  those 
two  Turgenevs  that  was  leading  contentedly  this 
uprooted  life.  The  longing  for  return  would 
come  to  him,  and  he  would  go  back  to  his  country, 
not  only  to  receive  his  revenues,  but  to  win  back 
the  first  freshness  of  his  impressions  of  Russian 
life.  Constantly  in  his  books  he  interprets  the 
sense  of  return,  the  impression  of  long  empty 
houses,  of  creaking,  neglected  doors,  of  curtains 
rustling  in  some  empty  but  pervaded  room.  At 
each  visit  to  Spasskoe  he  would  renew  also  those 
memories  of  childhood,  the  interpretation  of 
which  is  one  of  the  very  rarest  of  even  Turgenev's 


Turgenev  71 

rare  gifts.  He  would  inspect  his  property  and 
at  the  same  time  resume  those  kindly  and  rather 
boisterous  Russian  friendships  from  which  the 
more  conventional  life  of  the  West  had  never 
wholly  withdrawn  him.  Nor  had  he  forgotten  his 
old  delight  in  exaggeration,  and  he  would  invent 
rhapsodies  about  his  estate,  inducing  his  friends 
to  visit  him  through  alluring  descriptions  of  his 
country  house,  his  park,  and  above  all  of  a  fair 
neighbour  who,  their  host  assured  them,  would 
enslave  each  of  them  at  the  first  glance.  Off  they 
would  start,  then,  from  Moscow,  only  to  discover 
that  the  country  house  and  the  park  were  nothing 
very  wonderful  and  the  mysterious  beauty  posi- 
tively ugly.  But  Turgenev's  hospitality  and  good 
spirits,  the  shooting,  the  swimming  in  the  pond, 
and  above  all,  perhaps,  the  excellent  champignons 
d  la  creme  would  revive  the  spirits  of  these  de- 
luded visitors.  Then  they  would  organise  private 
theatricals,  in  which  the  peruke  of  Turgenev's 
Oedipus  was  a  source  of  great  astonishment.  It 
was  at  one  of  these  theatrical  representations 
that  Turgenev  uttered  the  historic  repetition  of  a 
cry  once  attributed  to  him  in  real  earnest  :  "  Save 
me !  I  am  the  only  son  of  a  rich  widow  !  " 

But  as  time  passed  amusement  gave  place  to 
more  serious  considerations.  The  emancipation 
of  the  serfs  was  commencing,  and  the  attention 
of  Turgenev,  as  of  all  other  thinking  Russians, 
was  focussed '  upon   the  constitution   of   Russia. 


72  Two  Russian  Reformers 

As  early  as  1850  the  novelist  had  enfranchised  his 
own  servants,  endowing  them  with  both  land 
and  houses.  As  for  the  serfs  on  the  land,  he  had 
given  them  a  choice  between  barchtchina,  the 
corvee,  and  abrok,  tenure  in  money.  In  addition 
to  this  he  founded  a  hospital  for  the  peasants,  and 
after  the  abolition  of  serfdom  and  the  liquidation 
of  accounts  between  masters  and  peasants,  he 
endowed  his  servants  gratuitously  and  even 
restored  to  the  moujiks  a  fifth  of  the  indemnity 
which  they  owed  him  for  arable  land.  Besides 
all  these  concessions,  which  were  in  reality  gifts, 
he  made  them  a  present  of  wood  and  other 
perquisites,  the  right  to  which  was  always  renewed 
on  his  different  returns  to  Spasskoe.  Now,  as 
always,  the  relations  between  Turgenev  and  his 
dependants  were  easy-going  in  the  extreme.  He 
remained  always  the  master  who  had  so  easily 
made  a  friend  of  Porphyre  Kartacheff.  On  one 
occasion  he  was  on  his  way  to  pay  a  visit  in  his 
own  carriage  drawn  by  his  own  horses  with 
his  own  coachman  and  footman.  Suddenly  the 
equipage  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the  road,  and 
the  footman  and  the  coachman  commenced  a 
game  of  cards.  Their  master  looked  on  without 
protest  and  waited  patiently  until  the  end  of  the 
game.  Turgenev,  in  spite  of  his  long  subjection  to 
Western  influences,  was  in  natural  accord  with  the 
national  temperament,  and  could  not  be  otherwise 
than  sympathetic  in  his  role  of  landed  proprietor. 


Turgenev  73 

One  cannot  lay  too  great  stress  on  this  point, 
because  the  great  novelist  has  been  so  often 
accused  of  having  proved  false  to  principles  which, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  never  professed. 

His  relations  with  his  own  peasants  may  be 
judged  from  this  characteristic  little  prophecy. 
"  One  day,"  said  he  to  his  friend  Polonski,  "  we 
shall  be  seated  behind  the  house  drinking  tea. 
Suddenly  there  will  arrive  by  the  garden  a  crowd 
of  peasants.  They  will  take  off  their  hats  and 
bow  profoundly.  '  Well,  brothers,'  I  shall  say 
to  them,  *  what  is  it  that  you  want  ?  '  '  Excuse 
us,  master,'  they  will  reply  :  '  don't  get  angry.  You 
are  a  good  master,  and  we  love  you  well.  .  .  . 
But  all  the  same  we  must  hang  you,  and  him  as 
well '  (pointing  you  out  Polonski).  *  What's  that  ? 
Hang  us  ?  '  'Oh,  yes  !  there  is  a  Ukase  that 
orders  it.  .  .  .  We  have  brought  a  rope.  Say 
your  prayers.  .  .  .  We  can  easily  wait  a  little 
while.'  " 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  life  in  Russia  was  becoming 
rather  difficult  for  this  cosmopolitan,  whom  his 
peasants,  because  of  his  eye-glass,  called  their 
"blind  man." 

But  if  life  was  difficult  in  the  country  it  was 
far  worse  at  St.  Petersburg,  where  the  police 
worried  him  as  soon  as  he  left  the  train.  Here, 
too,  he,  the  most  suave  and  docile  of  men,  was 
dragged  into  disputes  with  his  brother  authors. 
He  was  bothered  by  Gontcharof,  who  considered 


74  Two  Russian  Reformers 

himself  plagiarised,  and  he  had  difficulties  for 
editorial  reasons  with  Nekrassof .  Society  received 
him  without  much  enthusiasm  and  with  a  cordi- 
ality that  rose  and  fell  with  his  vogue  as  a  novelist- 
The  capital  brought  but  little  inspiration  to  Ivan 
Turgenev,  and  even  at  Spasskoe  much  of  the 
illusion  of  the  early  days  seemed  to  him  to  have 
fled,  leaving  his  old  home  desolate  and  silent. 

His  relations  with  Tolstoy  became  exceedingly 
strained  during  one  of  these  visits  to  Russia. 
Turgenev  had  given  an  account  of  the  method  of 
education  that  he  had  adopted  for  his  daughter 
when  the  younger  novelist  interrupted  him  with, 
"Ah,  yes :  you  are  making  experiments  in 
anima  vili  T'  Naturally,  Turgenev  was  furious, 
and  the  incident  very  nearly  led  to  a  duel  on  more 
than  one  occasion.  They  were  guests  of  the  poet 
Fet  at  the  time,  and  after  Turgenev  had  so  far 
lost  control  of  himself  as  to  threaten  to  strike 
Tolstoy  he  apologised  instantly  to  his  hostess. 
They  left  the  house  in  different  carriages,  and 
Tolstoy  sent  two  challenges  en  route,  only  one  of 
which  was  received.  Some  time  afterwards,  when 
the  old  quarrel  was  apparently  dead  and  buried, 
some  mischief-maker  told  Turgenev  that  Tolstoy 
had  practically  accused  him  of  cowardice,  where- 
upon he  sent  a  challenge  immediately.  His 
rival,  however,  replied  that  he  had  been  misin- 
formed, and  peace  was  established  between  them. 
In   reality   their   temperaments   were   hopelessly 


Turgenev  75 

antagonistic,  and  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  be 
genuine  friends,  though  they  continued  to  exchange 
visits.  On  one  of  these  visits  to  Yasnaya  Polyana 
Turgenev  discussed  over  a  game  of  chess  with 
his  host  the  old  topic  of  giving  all  that  one  has 
to  the  poor.  "  What !  everything  that  one  has  ?  " 
exclaimed  Turgenev,  with  incredulous  insistence. 
"Then  you  will  give  everything,  everything  that 
is  in  this  room,  even  the  table  on  which  we  are 
playing  ?  "  To  which  Tolstoy  replied  grimly  : 
**  Even  the  table  on  which  we  are  playing." 

But  though  Turgenev  was  neither  interested 
in  nor  convinced  by  the  "  conversion  "  of  Count 
Tolstoy,  no  one  appreciated  his  work  as  an  artist 
more  keenly  than  he.  In  "  War  and  Peace  "  he 
detected  at  once  that  the  weak  points  were  those 
which  the  public  welcomed  with  enthusiasm — 
namely  the  historic  and  psychological  longueurs 
— while  what  was  really  of  the  first  order  was 
the  series  of  military  and  descriptive  pictures. 
Turgenev  asked  from  the  artist  only  art,  and  his 
standpoint  remained  the  same  even  when  he  was 
dying.  He  preserved  always  his  own  kind  of 
sincerity,  the  earnestness  of  the  artist  as  opposed 
to  the  earnestness  of  the  conscious  reformer.  "  My 
good  and  dear  Friend,"  he  wrote  to  Tolstoy  almost 
at  the  very  last, — '*  It  is  a  long  time  since  I  have 
written  to  you,  because  I  have  been  and  I  am,  to 
speak  frankly,  on  my  death-bed.  I  cannot  get 
well,  there  is  no  use  in  thinking  of  it.     I  write 


76  Two  Russian  Reformers 

to  you  before  everything  else  to  tell  you  how 
happy  I  have  been  to  be  your  contemporary,  and 
to  express  to  you  my  last  and  immediate  prayer. 
My  friend,  return  to  literature  !  Reflect  that  this 
gift  has  come  to  you  from  the  Source  of  all 
things." 

His  relations  with  Dostoievsky  were  from  first 
to  last  even  more  unfortunate.  Dostoievsky 
introduced  him  in  one  of  his  novels  as  Karmazi- 
noff,  a  spiteful  and  unsuccessful  author.  "  They 
tell  me,"  wrote  Turgenev  to  Polonsky,  "  that 
Dostoievsky  has  brought  me  upon  the  stage ; 
much  good  may  it  do  him  !  He  paid  me  a  visit 
at  Baden-Baden  five  years  ago,  not  in  order  to 
repay  me  the  money  that  he  had  borrowed,  but 
in  order  to  insult  me  in  every  kind  of  way  on  the 
subject  of  '  Smoke,'  which,  according  to  him, 
ought  to  be  burnt  by  the  common  hangman.  I 
listened  in  absolute  silence  to  this  philippic. 
What  did  I  learn  a  little  later  ?  I  had  expressed 
to  him  all  sorts  of  criminal  opinions,  which  he  had 
hastened  to  communicate  to  Berteneff — Berteneff 
in  fact  wrote  to  me  about  it.  This  would  be  a 
calumny  pure  and  simple  if  Dostoievsky  were  not 
out  of  his  mind,  as  I  have  very  little  doubt 
that  he  is.  Perhaps  he  dreamed  all  that.  But, 
Heavens  !    what   miserable   tittle-tattle  !  " 

The  antagonism  between  them  was  of  old  stand- 
ing. One  day,  about  the  year  1840,  several  friends 
of  Turgenev  were  playing  cards  at  his  house,  and 


Turgenev  77 

among  them  were  Belinsky,  Ogareff  and  Hertzen. 
Dostoievsky  was  expected,  and  just  as  he  entered 
the  room  there  happened  to  be  a  general  outburst 
of  laughter  at  some  foolish  mistake  of  one  of  the 
players.  Dostoievsky  grew  pale  and  left  the 
room  without  uttering  a  word.  At  first  no  notice 
was  taken  of  this,  as  they  expected  that  he  would 
return  ;  but  as  he  did  not  do  so,  his  host  went  out 
to  see  what  had  become  of  him.  The  servant 
informed  him  that  Fedor  Mikhailovitch  had  been 
walking  up  and  down  outside  the  house  for  the 
last  hour,  without  his  hat.  Turgenev  rushed  out 
of  the  house  and  asked  Dostoievsky  the  meaning 
of  this  strange  conduct.  "  By  God  !  "  exclaimed 
his  guest,  "it  is  intolerable !  Wherever  I  go 
everybody  mocks  me.  I  had  scarcely  put  foot 
in  your  house  when  you  and  your  guests  over- 
whelmed me  with  your  ridicule.  Are  you  not 
ashamed  of  it  ?  "  Turgenev  did  his  best  to  con- 
vince him  that  no  one  had  the  slightest  intention 
of  making  fun  of  him,  but  it  was  quite  useless. 
He  would  not  listen  to  reason,  and  returned  to  the 
hall  only  for  his  hat  and  overcoat,  after  which  he 
left  abruptly. 

Dostoievsky's  hatred  of  Turgenev  became  more 
and  more  bitter.  That  strange  Russian  of  genius 
had  himself  been  struck  by  the  guillotine  more  than 
by  any  other  of  the  wonders  of  Europe,  and  when 
Turgenev's  "  Execution  of  Troppman  "  appeared, 
he  attacked  it  savagely  for  what  he  considered  its 


78  Two  Russian  Reformers 

mincing  affectation.  "  King  Lear  "  also  seemed 
to  him  feeble.  "He  is  failing,  he  is  becoming 
more  and  more  pale,"  Dostoievsky  gloated  in 
triumph. 

In  the  end  the  suave  and  ironical  Turgenev 
grew    almost     equally    bitter,    and     "  C'est     du 
Dostoievsky  "  became  his  most  scornful  comment. 
He  retaliated  also  in  print,  and  represented  his 
rival  as  a  badly  balanced  mediocrity.     It   is  a 
misfortune  that  these  two  great  Russian  writers 
should  have  been  so  antipathetic  to  one  another. 
It   is  a  profound  misfortune  that  he  who  best 
interpreted   to   the  Western   world   the    soul   of 
Russia  should  have  been  the  personal  antagonist 
of    the    veritable    confessor    of    that    soul.     For, 
whatever  sombre,  inchoate  message  wells  up  from 
the  depths  of  the  Slav's  heart  was  Dostoievsky's 
by  right  of  suffering,  of  punishment,  of  divination. 
/iHe,   and    neither    Turgenev    nor  Tolstoy,  is   the 
:    ultimate  revealer  of  the  wounded  soul  of  the  Slav 
!    who    believes    without    reasoning,    who    divines^ 
without    analysing,  who   feels   without   knowing. 
And  Turgenev  knew  in  his  heart,  through  all  his 
gentle,   penetrating  irony,  that   this   epileptic   of 
genius  was  not  at  all  a  badly  balanced  mediocrity. 
When    the    more    than    ordinarily    unintelligent 
storm    of    abuse    greeted    "  Fathers    and    Sons " 
Turgenev    acknowledged    that    Dostoievsky    was 
the  one  man  who  really  divined  what  he  had 
meant  by  the  book.     However  that  may  be,  it 


Turgenev  79 

was  a  loss  to  the  creative  artist  in  Turgenev  to 
have  been  misunderstood  by  the  man  who  of  all 
others  stands  nearest  to  the  heart  of  the  Russian 
people.  And  when  Russia  acknowledged  her  loss 
in  the  death  of  this  stricken  man,  who  was  the 
very  symbol  of  her  own  suffering  and  endurance, 
it  is,  indeed,  a  peculiarly  ironical  circumstance 
that  Turgenev,  who  ought  best  of  all  to  have 
understood,  turned  derisively  away. 

But  in  spite  of  all  these  miseries  of  antagonism 
which  renewed  themselves  on  his  returns  to 
Russia,  the  old  charm  of  that  garden  at  Spasskoe 
would  occasionally  assert  itself,  and  Turgenev 
would  feel  himself  again  that  watchful  dreamer 
for  whom  irony  had  already  commenced  to  mingle 
with  dreams.  But  outside  of  this  oasis  he  is 
more  and  more  overwhelmed  by  the  all-pervading 
want  of  the  Russian  people.  Poverty,  squalor, 
rags,  this  is  what  he  sees  on  all  sides  of  him,  so  that 
it  becomes  more  and  more  impossible  to  believe 
that  Russia  is  the  lagging  leader  of  the  nations. 
Nor  can  he  believe  that  the  time  is  even  approach- 
ing when  all  this  inarticulate  endurance  will 
vibrate  into  the  revolt  of  action.  He  cannot 
believe ;  and  in  two  books,  the  one  wholly  pessi- 
mistic, the  other  lit  up  by  that  inner  faith  in  the 
Russian  people  which  never  wholly  deserted  him, 
in  "  Virgin  Soil  "  and  "  Fathers  and  Sons,"  he  has 
expressed  the  very  kernel  of  his  disillusion. 

Virgin  Soil,'  "  said  Turgenev  on  one  occasion, 


((  < 


8o  Two  Russian  Reformers 

"  has  cost  me  a  great  deal  of  energy.  Everybody 
insults  me  now.  They  say  that  I  do  not  under- 
stand what  I  am  writing.  That  is  false.  I  have 
studied  the  subject  of  *  Virgin  Soil '  to  the  bottom, 
and  in  spite  of  all  the  critics,  I  persist,  now  as 
formerly,  in  my  opinions  on  the  policy  to  be 
maintained  against  the  Government."  This  was 
typical  of  Turgenev's  attitude  not  only  towards 
one  book  but  towards  a  whole  series  of  books  : 
'*  That  was  his  Dada,"  comments  Pavlovsky  ; 
"  his  conviction  that  he  thoroughly  understood 
our  youth  was  unshakeable,  and  our  critics  could 
not  make  him  retract."  One  of  them,  speaking 
of  the  articles  on  "  Virgin  Soil "  which  were 
published  abroad,  concluded  :  "  Foreigners  can 
devote  articles  to  it ;  as  for  us,  we  do  not  even  wish 
to  spit  on  it."  "  What  stinginess,  good  God  !  " 
retorted  Turgenev.  He  had  already  lashed  what 
he  asserted  to  be  the  only  sign  of  evidence  of 
energy  in  Young  Russia,  Young  Russia's  answer 
to  all  human  progress — cracker  Id-dessiis. 

In  "  Virgin  Soil  "  we  have  the  familiar  tragedy 
of  the  Russian  Hamlet  repeated  upon  the  most 
hopeless  stage  in  the  world.  Nezhdanov,  the 
illegitimate  son  of  a  Russian  noble,  who  is  fired  by 
revolutionary  ideas,  is  at  the  same  time  conscious 
that  he  knows  nothing  of  the  Russian  people  for 
whose  benefit  the  revolution  is  to  be  effected. 
He  is  engaged  as  a  tutor  by  a  certain  Sipyagin,  a 
Russian  Liberal  who  preserves  a  sneaking  affection 


Turgenev  8i 

for  the  knout.  At  his  house  the  young  student 
meets  his  niece  Marianna,  a  dependant  who  is 
out  of  sympathy  with  everybody  and  everything 
in  this  well-ordered  house.  She,  too,  longs  pas- 
sionately, not  to  acquire  something  for  her  own 
benefit,  but  to  do  something  for  Russia.  She 
begins  by  falling  in  love  with  Nezhdanov. 

The  situation  is  only  too  familiar  in  the  novels 
of  Turgenev.  With  Nezhdanov  it  is  a  case  of  "  I 
would  and  I  would  not."  Instinctively  he  shrinks 
from  this  girl  who  believes  in  him ;  instinctively 
he  realises  that  he  will  never  be  able  to  translate 
the  resolutions  that  flash  from  her  eyes.  He  is 
a  poet,  and  action  is  demanded  of  him.  He  is  a 
dreamer  of  complex  dreams,  and  Fate  has  asked 
him  to  concentrate  all  the  force  of  his  being 
upon  one  woman.  It  is  not  in  his  nature  to 
respond  whole-heartedly  to  this  ironical  challenge 
of  destiny.  But  as  this  romance  has  commenced 
he  must  do  his  part  as  best  he  can,  and  so  he  runs 
away  with  Marianna,  and  they  conceal  themselves 
in  a  factory  of  which  his  friend,  Solomin,  is 
manager.  Here,  Nezhdanov  endeavours  to  come 
into  touch  with  the  Russian  people.  He  disguises 
himself  as  a  pedlar  and  distributes  leaflets  among 
the  moujiks,  who  as  a  rule  reply  to  him  with  jeers. 

In  the  meantime  the  revolutionary  authorities, 
in  whose  scheme  of  things  Nezhdanov  and  Mari- 
anna are  so  many  misunderstood  pawns,  become 
weary  of  inactivity.     Something  must  be  done. 


82  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Nezhdanov  must  show  himself  to  be  a  leader  of 
men.     In   response   to   the   latest   injunction   he 
starts  out  in  his  horrible  disguise  more  determined 
than  ever,  shouting  revolutionary  sentiments  of 
the  most  advanced  kind  along  the  quiet  country 
roads.     The    peasants    merely    stare    at    him    in 
bewilderment  as  he  drives  past  them  in  his  lumber- 
ing cart.     Suddenly  he  catches  sight  of  a  group 
of  peasants  in  front  of  an  open  barn  and,  jumping 
down,  he  approaches  them,  shouting  at  the  top 
of  his  voice  ;    "  Freedom  !  forward  !  shoulder   to 
shoulder  !  "  among  a  multitude  of  half-inarticulate 
phrases.     The   attitude   of  the  peasants  is  that 
of  slightly  bewildered  indifference,  and  the  unfor- 
tunate leader  of  revolt  continues  his  drive  as  far  as 
the  next  village,  where  he  is  dragged  into  a  tavern 
by  a  gigantic  moujik.    Then,  in  his  role  of  a  learner 
as  well  as  of  a  teacher,  he  begins  to  drink,  and  the 
horrible  vodka  maddens  him.     Torrents  of  words 
foam  from  his  lips— words,  words,  a  veritable  rage 
and  torment  of  words.     And  stih  he  drinks  and 
drinks  to  the  rhythm  of  this  new  rage,  as  though 
by  some  monstrous  magic  the  apostle  of  liberty 
had  been  bewitched  into  a  tavern  hero.     Even 
the  peasants  lose  patience  with  him,  handle  him 
roughly,  shout  at  him  as  he  staggers  into  the  cart 
to  be  driven  back  to  the  young  girl  who  had  sent 
him   out   as   her   knight-errant   in   the   quest   of 
liberty. 

When  consciousness  comes  back   to    him    the 


Turgenev  83 

vision  has  lost  the  faintest  film  of  glamour.  He 
can  no  longer  attempt  to  deceive  himself.  The 
farce  grins  up  at  him  too  closely  for  any  subterfuge 
of  nobility.  He  cannot  continue,  but  on  the  other 
hand  he  cannot  forsake  his  comrades  or  abandon 
this  young  girl  who  has  trusted  him  with  her  life. 
She  is  waiting  for  him  to  tell  her  that  he  loves 
her  with  his  soul,  and  then  she  will  marry  him. 
But  he  cannot  believe  even  in  that  dream,  and 
he  will  not  lie,  particularly  now  that  he  has  read 
his  failure  in  the  brutalised  stare  of  peasants' 
eyes.  Between  him  and  all  fair  dreams  float  the 
fumes  of  vodka  ;  the  ennobling  cry  for  Liberty 
has  been  drowned  by  the  bawling  of  drunken 
clowns.  Reality  has  pranced  with  heavy  hoof 
upon  the  heart  of  this  dreamer  ;  he  can  no  longer 
screen  his  soul  from  disillusion.  No  longer,  roused 
by  rhetoric  and  furious  aspirations  unbacked  by 
any  evidence  of  action,  can  he  hope  even  moment- 
arily to  deceive  himself.  The  whole  matter  stands 
out  in  squalidly  naked  perspective.  On  the  one 
side  is  a  mere  handful  of  thinkers,  all  more  or  less 
incapable  of  sustained,  concentrated  action,  but 
faithful  to  their  ideals,  eager  for  sacrifice,  however 
useless  and  however  sordid.  And  opposed  to 
these  who  would  so  gladly  rescue  them  from 
themselves,  are  millions  and  millions  of  terribly 
contented  people  who  shake  them  off  listlessly, 
as  some  huge  sullen  brute  would  shake  off  flies. 
It  is  not  that  they  have  been  getting  out  of  touch 


84  Two  Russian  Reformers 

with  the  Russian  people  ;  it  is  that  they,  a  mere 
isolated  group  of  dreamers  absorbed  in  their  own 
ideals,  have  no  meaning  whatsoever  to  the  vast 
bulk  of  their  compatriots.  It  is  not  that  they 
have  misunderstood  the  people's  aspirations ; 
it  is  that  as  yet  there  are  no  aspirations  to  under- 
stand. Instead  of  divining  some  great  but  inarticu- 
late dream  of  a  race,  this  group  of  self-constituted 
apostles  has  merely  endeavoured  to  impress  its 
own  ambitions  upon  a  sluggish  and  dreamless 
people.  It  is  all  a  mistake.  From  the  very 
beginning  it  has  been  a  mistake,  by  which  there 
has  been  stamped  upon  many  noble  lives  a  martyr- 
dom without  result  and  only  too  often  without 
conviction.  Marianna  believes  in  it  still,  but  he 
cannot  pretend  to  believe  in  it,  and  so  he  is  only 
a  clog  to  the  girl  who  wishes  him  to  share  her 
beautiful  fantasy.  There  is  nothing  for  him 
to  do  upon  the  earth.  He  sees  too  clearly,  and 
nothing  will  ever  inspire  him  with  that  merciful 
illusion  which  preserves  so  many  lives  no  less 
noble  than  his.  And  so  Nezhdanov  puts  a  bullet 
through  his  brain  and  leaves  for  ever  this  virgin 
soil  upon  which  there  still  hovers  the  coma  of  the 
sleeping  centuries.  Nezhdanov  is  another  of  those 
stricken  Russian  Hamlets,  but  he  is  one  of  the 
very  few  heroes  of  Turgenev  who  has  been,  so  to 
speak,  led  up  to  the  very  mouth  of  action. 

There  is  in  this  book,  however,  in  the  person  of 
Solomin,  a  new  type  that  is  the  antithesis  of  the 


Turgenev  85 

Russian  Hamlet.  This  factory  manager  had  lived, 
for  many  years  in  England,  and  had  acquired  the' 
practical  qualities  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  In 
his  opinion  there  is  wanted  in  Russia  neither  a 
Mirabeau  nor  a  Camille  Desmoulins,  but  rather 
very  patient,  laborious  people  who  would  teach 
the  alphabet  to  children  and  pester  their  parents 
into  making  some  efforts  towards  orderliness  in 
their  homes.  That,  rather  than  death  on  any 
imitated  barricades,  is,  in  the  opinion  of  Solomin, 
the  sacrifice  demanded  by  Russia.  The  factory 
manager  is  utterly  without  enthusiasm,  but  also 
without  cynicism.  It  is  good  for  Russia  that 
there  should  be  factory  managers  like  himself, 
and  so  he  is  doing  his  duty  as  a  patriot  by  avoiding 
Siberia  and  keeping  his  head  on  his  shoulders. 
Turgenev  himself  defended  the  cunning  of  Solomin 
as  the  only  quality  by  which  a  revolutionary 
could  possibly  survive.  Russian  criticism,  par- 
ticularly incensed  by  this  book,  affirmed  that 
Turgenev,  living  abroad,  had  completely  for- 
gotten Russian  life  and  Russian  aims.  But  the 
author  of  "  Smoke,"  from  his  vantage-point  of 
the  Russian  tree  in  Baden,  was  more  and  more 
overwhelmingly  convinced  that  he  knew  to  the 
core  every  class  of  Russian  society.  Solomin, 
however,  was  apparently  a  quite  new  type,  and 
one,  moreover,  which  Young  Russia  found  it 
impossible  to  imitate. 
This  is  perhaps  remarkable,  for  Young  Russia 

6 


86  Two  Russian  Reformers 

had  already  imitated  another  new  type  in  an 
earUer  book — the  nihiUst  hero  of  "  Fathers  and 
Sons."  This  book  also  is  notoriously  one  of 
political  disillusion,  but  its  pessimism  is  infinitely 
less  sombre  than  that  of  "  Virgin  Soil,"  in  which, 
from  the  first  page  to  the  last,  the  suspicious 
Turgenev  had  been  constantly  at  work.  In  the 
earlier  book  there  is  always  the  recognition  of 
useful  courage  and  honesty  and  steadfastness 
both  in  the  older  and  in  the  younger  generations. 
Above  all,  there  is  in  this  novel  a  character  in 
whom  Turgenev  believes.  Asked  whether  he  had 
photographed  Bazaroff  from  actual  life,  Turgenev 
replied  : 

"  No,  that  is  not  true.  That  particular  type 
had  already  absorbed  me  for  a  long  time  when,  in 
i860,  while  travelling  in  Germany,  I  met  in  a 
railway  carriage  a  young  Russian  doctor.  He 
was  consumptive,  tall,  with  black  hair  and  a 
bronzed  complexion.  I  made  him  talk,  and  was 
astonished  at  his  keen  and  original  opinions. 
Two  hours  afterwards  we  separated,  and  my  novel 
was  done.  I  gave  two  years  to  writing  it,  but  that 
was  no  work  for  me  ;  it  was  merely  a  matter  of 
putting  down  on  paper  a  work  already  complete. 
You  have  perhaps  observed  that  my  Bazaroff  is 
a  blonde.  It  is  the  surest  proof  that  he  was  sym- 
pathetic to  me.  In  my  works  all  my  sympathetic 
heroes  are  blondes.  From  my  own  observations 
I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  blondes  are 


Turgenev  87 

always  more  sympathetic  than  dark  people.     For 
example,  Belinsky,  Hertzen  and  the  others.  .  .  ." 

So  absorbed  was  he  by  the  conception  of  this 
nihilist  type  that  while  he  was  writing  "  Fathers 
and  Sons  "  he  kept  a  journal  of  Bazaroff :  "If 
I  read  a  new  book,  if  I  met  an  interesting  man,  or 
even  if  an  event  of  importance,  political  or  social, 
took  place,  I  would  enter  it  always  in  this  journal 
from  the  point  of  view  of  Bazaroff.  The  result 
was  a  very  voluminous  and  curious  manuscript. 
I  lost  it  unfortunately.  Some  one  or  other  bor- 
rowed it  from  me  to  read  it,  and  did  not  return  it 
to  me." 

Certainly,  in  none  of  his  books  has  Turgenev 
expressed  more  frankly  his  underlying  belief  in 
Russia  and  the  Russian  people  than  in  this  study 
of  a  revolt  which  is  greater  than  the  inchoate 
failure  that  absorbs  it.  Turgenev  was  not 
equivocal  in  regard  to  Bazaroff,  as  so  many  have 
supposed.  "  The  death  of  Bazaroff,"  he  wrote  in 
a  letter,  "  which  the  Comtesse  de  Sallis  called 
heroic  and  criticises  for  that  reason,  should  in  my 
opinion  give  the  last  touch  to  his  tragic  figure  ; 
your  young  people,  they  see  in  it  only  an  accident . 
I  end  on  this  remark.  If  the  reader  does  not  love 
Bazaroff  with  all  his  roughness,  all  his  harshness, 
his  pitiless  dryness,  his  asperity — if  he  does  not 
love  him,  I  say,  the  fault  is  in  me,  I  have  not 
attained  to  my  aim.  To  flatter  like  a  spaniel 
I   have   not  wished,  although  cioubtless  by  that 


88  Two  Russian  Reformers 

means  I  might  have  been  able  to  win  over  all  the 
young  people  to  my  side ;  but  I  had  no  wish  to 
purchase  a  popularity  by  concessions  of  that 
kind.  It  is  better  to  lose  the  campaign  (and  I 
believe  that  I  have  lost  it)  than  gain  it  by  such  a 
subterfuge.  I  dreamed  of  a  figure,  sombre,  un- 
tamed, great,  only  half  emerged  from  barbarism, 
brave,  wayward  and  honest,  none  the  less  con- 
demned to  perish  since  it  is  always  on  the  threshold 
of  the  future."  In  another  letter  he  observes 
of  this  hero,  who  seems  to  have  so  far  outstripped 
the  ordinary  Turgenevian  hero  :  *'  The  sentiment 
of  duty,  an  excellent  sentiment  of  patriotism  in 
the  true  sense  of  that  word,  that  is  all  that  is 
wanted  at  the  present  moment.  And  Bazaroff, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  a  type,  a  precursor,  a  great 
harmonious  figure,  with  a  certain  prestige,  not 
without  a  certain  halo." 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was  to  so  large  an 
extent  taken  from  life,  Bazaroff,  like  Solomin,.  was 
accepted  as  a  new  type  evolved  by  Turgenev 
rather  than  one  portrayed  from  contemporary 
Russian  life.  Resolute,  arrogant,  plebeian,  be- 
lieving in  the  future  and  emancipated  from  the 
past,  the  young  Russian  doctor  is  a  product  of 
materialism.  His  whole  personality  vibrates  with 
energy,  and  the  faith  that  is  in  him  is  centred  not 
in  a  dream  of  idealism,  but  in  the  closely  observed 
fact.  Old  and  Young  Russia  alike  considered 
themselves  caricatured  in  this  volume,  in  which. 


Turgenev  89 

however,  it  is  not  the  two  generations  but  the 
types  themselves  that  are  antagonistic  to  each 
other.  Turgenev  has  repeatedly  defended  his 
hero,  Bazaroff,  but  what  was  his  real  attitude  ? 
It  is  almost  impossible  to  recognise  in  this  fastidi- 
ous observer  a  whole-hearted  sympathiser  with 
Bazaroff,  the  man  who  squares  his  shoulders  and 
forces  his  way  through  a  browbeaten  world. 
Turgenev  by  every  instinct  of  his  temperament 
was  bound  to  the  lazy  aristocratic  traditions 
which  he  ridiculed  and  denied.  Fine,  sensitive, 
exotic,  it  was  almost  physically  repulsive  to  him 
to  hob-nob  with  uncouth  partisans  of  action,  in 
his  opinion  at  once  absurd  and  ill-timed.  And 
this  physical  fastidiousness  which  so  enraged  his 
enemies  is  betrayed  in  this  volume  almost  as  much 
as  in  "  Virgin  Soil."  In  that  book  he  was  unable  to 
force  himself  to  believe  in  any  vital  and  vitalising 
type  that  might  yet  break  through  the  desolating 
coma  of  Russia.  In  "  Fathers  and  Sons'*  he  per- 
suaded himself  that  he  was  indeed  captured  by 
the  personality  of  the  young  free-thinking  doctor. 
After  all  here  is  a  man  at  last.  Here  at  last  is  the 
incarnation  of  will  that,  like  a  new  elixir  of  life, 
may  work  through  these  will-less,  voiceless  millions. 
But  is  he  really  attached  to  Bazaroff  ?  Is  that 
suspicious  Turgenev  really  lulled  into  a  quiet 
contentment  with  the  Russian  of  the  future  ? 
One  can  hardly  believe  it,  in  spite  of  Turgenev's 
own  protests.     One  recalls  those  two  duel  scenes, 


90  Two  Russian  Reformers 

both  in  the  freshness  of  early  morning,  both 
tinged  with  irony,  both  robbed  of  the  faintest 
fringe  of  romance.  The  duel  in  "  Spring  Tor- 
rents," however,  is  a  jeu  d'esprit  compared  with 
the  duel  between  Bazaroff,  the  representative  of 
the  new  school,  and  Pavel,  the  representative 
of  the  old.  Every  nuance  is  noted  in  the  outer 
bearing  of  each  as  they  face  each  other  with 
loaded  pistols  for  the  sake  of  a  serf  girl.  Pavel 
is  obeying  his  code  ;  he  is  cold,  faultless,  correct, 
and  from  any  standpoint  of  civilisation  absolutely 
in  the  right.  Physical  fear  is  unknown  to  either, 
but  Bazaroff  is  impressed,  almost  perturbed,  by 
the  quietude  of  the  older  generation.  This  man 
who  knows  nothing  at  all  of  Russia's  hopes,  nothing 
of  the  unleashed  tumult  of  democracy,  nothing 
of  the  new  passion  that  is  to  galvanise  the  old 
inertia,  this  imperturbable  figure-head  of  a  frozen 
school,  will  assuredly  shoot  and  shoot  to  kill. 
That  is  what  Bazaroff  understands  as  he  faces 
the  elderly  prince,  not  without  curiosity,  at 
ten  paces.  But  just  as  Turgenev  refuses  to  allow 
any  halo  to  surround  poor  Sanin  after  that  duel 
near  Frankfort,  so  he  refuses  to  allow  the  exchange 
of  pistol-shots  to  throw  any  romantic  glamour 
upon  either  of  these  more  mature  combatants. 

The  real  opponent  of  Bazaroff  is  not  the  wounded 
Russian  prince,  but  Madame  Odintzoff,  the  per- 
fumed indolent  woman  of  the  world,  over  whose 
personality  the  two  Turgenevs  were  always  con- 


Turgenev  91 

tending,  the  one  being  drawn  to  her  as  to  the  goal 
of  all  desire,  the  other  denying  her  as  an  enslaver 
of  the  soul.     One  sees  her  in  this  book  as  a  verit- 
able triumph  of  seductive  indolence.     Indolent,  , 
indolent,  and  always  indolent — that  is  her  secret, 
her  charm  and  her  emptiness  in  one.     The  soul 
of   this   woman   permeates   a    household   like    a 
distilled    essence    laden    with  poisonous   dreams. 
The  rough  Russian  doctor  is  armed  against  every 
enemy   but    this.     The    plebeian    can    withstand 
the  hauteur  of  the  aristocrat,  the  threats  of  the 
reactionary,  the  denouncing  clamour  of  the  priest, 
but  he  cannot  resist  the  troubling  perfume  of  this 
woman's  indolent  unrest.     Like  hypnotism  it  goes 
to  his  head,  and  the  woman  is  not  wholly  dis- 
pleased that  it  should.     She  is  able  to  haunt  this 
savage  man,  whose  faith  has  been  so  long  confined 
to  the  exact  sciences.     Quietly  the  summer  days 
follow  each  other,  and  more  and  more  the  young 
doctor  trembles  under  a  spell  against  which  all 
known  science  is  futile.     The  positivist  has  become 
a  foolish  dreamer  like  all  the  rest.     How  shall  he, 
this  Samson  shorn  of  his  strength,  dissipate  the 
languor  of  the  centuries  from  the  Russian  steppes  ? 
And  the  indolent  woman,  reading  with  sleepy 
half-closed  eyes  French  novels  between  the  per- 
fumed sheets,  muses  dimly  on  this  oddity  of  New 
Russia.     What  is  this  Bazaroff  ?     Is  he  a  man 
like  the  rest  ?     There  has  been  nothing  like  him 
in  Russia  before.     After  all,  he  might  be  amusing 


92  Two  Russian  Reformers 

as  a  new  type — a  plebeian  with  his  own  pride,  a 
pride  in  Russia.  Thus  she  muses  on  him  lazily, 
and  a  little  timidly  even,  for  there  are  some  women 
for  whom,  in  La  Bruyere's  phrase,  a  gardener  is 
also  a  man.  For  her,  indeed,  the  young  doctor 
seems  to  be  essentially  a  man,  and  Bazaroff  the 
conqueror  exults  in  this  new  conquest  which 
seems  so  close  to  him.  Deeper  and  deeper  the 
intensity  of  his  passion  wells  up,  and  the  embodi- 
ment of  that  graceful  civilisation  which  he  denies 
lures  him  on  with  her  caressing,  satisfied  smile  of 
many  memories.  That  is  what  men  are,  rather 
open  and  simple,  she  seems  to  say  to  him.  But 
after  all  Bazaroif  may  be  a  little  different,  and  he 
shall  have  time  to  prove  that  he  is  really  a  novelty. 
She  is  kind  to  Bazaroff,  the  man  who  understands 
the  new  learning  without  in  the  least  understanding 
the  old  wisdom.  Suddenly  he  blurts  out  clumsily 
his  savage  secret.  And  now  he  has  said  to  her 
the  last  word  that  he  need  ever  say.  If  he  is  no 
more  complex  than  that,  if  he  has  nothing  more 
to  tell  her  than  that,  the  New  Russian  can  go 
the  old  way,  his  own  familiar  way  from  which  he 
should  never  have  strayed.  As  a  savage  he  was 
interesting  enough  just  so  long  as  savagery  retained 
its  own  secret,  but  when  that  secret  was  revealed, 
then  Bazaroff  became  a  tedious  person  who  ceased 
abruptly  to  amuse.  His  little  friend,  Arcady,  is 
more  akin  to  her.  It  was  perhaps  foolish  to  have 
played  so  long  with  one  who  could  become  so 


Turgenev  93 

uncouthly  in  earnest.  "  Madame  Odintzoff,"  wrote 
Turgenev  in  a  letter,  "  is  also  as  little  in  love 
with  Bazaroff  as  with  Arcady.  How  is  it  that 
you  do  not  see  it  ?  She  is  yet  another  type  of  our . 
lazy  epicurean  ladies,  of  the  women  of  the  noblesse. // 
The  Comtesse  de  Sallis  has  understood  her  very 
well.  Odintzoff  wished  at  first  to  caress  a  wolf 
(Bazaroff)  so  that  he  might  not  bite  her,  then  to 
caress  the  curly  head  of  a  youth  and  to  remain 
always  stretched  out  on  her  sofa."  That  is  the 
explanation ;  but  beneath  the  explanation  there 
is  something  temperamental  and  unreasonable. 
In  no  book  more  than  in  "  Fathers  and  Sons  '* 
does  Turgenev  show  his  almost  jealous  attitude 
towards  women.  No  one  is  good  enough  for  them 
except  the  incarnations  of  Turgenev  himself,  such 
as  Sanin  and  in  a  lesser  degree  the  hero  of  "Smoke." 
For  example,  he  admittedly  respects  and  even 
hails  with  enthusiasm  the  young  Russian  doctor 
while  he  dislikes  Madame  Odintzoff.  At  the 
same  time  he  involuntarily  protects  her  from  the 
caresses  of  this  sombre  savage.  Above  all,  he 
shares  Pavel's  prejudice  in  regard  to  Bazaroff 's 
advances  to  the  serf  girl,  who  was  not  the  least 
intimately  personal  of  his  own  memories. 

Bazaroff  has  done  with  them  all,  and  goes  back 
to  the  simple  people  from  whom  his  life  had  sprung. 
Like  Nezhdanov  in  "  Virgin  Soil,"  Bazaroff,  the 
very  antithesis  of  a  Russian  Hamlet,  returns  to 
the  people.     And  to  him  also  there  comes  the 


94  Two  Russian  Reformers 

sensation  of  powerlessness  before  the  almost 
physical  inertia  of  resistance.  Bazaroff,  the  Slav 
Titan  of  Science  who  by  denying  old  fetishes  had 
hoped  to  bring  into  being  a  new  faith,  is  beaten 
[  j  by  this  ironical  stagnation.  He  who  had  felt  so 
I  avid  before  the  feast  of  life  is  paralysed  in  the 
face  of  this  starved  solitude.  The  old  people 
cannot  understand  the  brooding  rage  and  dis- 
content that  smoulder  ceaselessly  in  the  heart  of 
their  son.  The  would-be  Prometheus  realises  that 
in  this  region  of  endless  silence  he  is  not  being 
*' punished  by  the  gods  for  bestowing  the  gift  of 
,fire  upon  mortals,  but  that  the  gift  itself  is  being 
thrust  stupidly  and  indifferently  aside.  The  motif 
of  this  book,  however,  is  not  so  desolate  as  that  of 
"  Virgin  Soil."  Nezhdanov  killed  himself  because 
he  could  not  face  the  conflict  between  his  dream 
and  actuality.  But  for  Bazaroff,  no  matter  how 
terrible  the  odds  against  him,  there  is  always  at 
least  belief  even  in  the  midst  of  denial.  If  he 
cannot  lead  men  to  freedom,  he  can  at  l^ast  serve 
science,  be  faithful  to  the  truth  while  there  is  life 
in  his  body.  And  he  can  die  doing  his  duty  in  the 
service  of  his  own  faith,  a  duty  none  the  less  noble 
because  it  is  performed  among  the  very  humblest. 
The  death  of  Bazaroff  is  tragic,  but  it  is  not  at- 
tended by  the  sensation  of  an  inner  hopelessness 
which  surrounds  the  death  of  Nezhdanov. 

Each    reading    in    turn    of    Russia's    enigma, 
whether  evolved  in  Russia  or  under  the  shade  of 


Turgcnev  95 

that  Russian  tree,  irritated  and  enraged  his  com- 
patriots. His  old  friends  were  disappearing  one 
after  the  other,  and  in  1870  Hertzen  died.  Turgenev 
felt  that  old  age  had  already  stolen  upon  him, 
and  his  pessimism  became  more  and  more  a  fixed 
habit  of  thought.  Like  most  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Baden  he  was  interested  in  the  Franco-Prussian 
War,  and  he  believed  in  the  victory  of  the  French 
arms,  and  that  the  French  uniform  would  be 
soon  conspicuous  about  the  Russian  tree.  "  Every- 
body is  going  away,"  he  writes  to  his  brother  on 
July  27,  1870;  "  as  for  me,  I  remain.  What  can 
they  do  to  me  ?  "  He  was  rather  astonished  at 
the  subsequent  action  of  events,  and  though  he  at 
first  believed  that  the  Prussians  represented  the 
future  of  civilisation  as  opposed  to  the  past,  he 
soon  realised  that  they  were  no  better  than  any 
other  conquerors.  He  protested  against  the  an- 
nexation of  Alsace.  "  Nationality,"  he  said,  "  has 
nothing  to  say  to  it  here.  The  Alsatians  are 
French  in  heart  and  soul." 

Turgenev  would  have  been  quite  content  to 
remain  on  German  soil  if  the  Viardots  had  re- 
mained. As  it  was,  as  soon  as  peace  was  declared 
they  moved  to  Paris,  and  the  Russian,  abandoning 
his  bitter  vantage-point  of  the  Russian  tree,  sold 
his  villa  in  order  to  follow  them.  "  li  they  had 
gone  to  Australia,"  he  remarked  to  a  friend,  **  I 
would  have  followed  them  there." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  he  followed  them  first  to 


96  Two  Russian  Reformers 

England,  and  in  1871  he  wrote  from  London  to 
Flaubert  :  "I  am  in  England,  not  for  the  pleasure 
of  being  there,  but  because  my  friends,  who  have 
been  pretty  well  ruined  by  the  war,  have  come  here 
to  try  and  make  a  little  money.  Nevertheless 
there  is  some  good  in  the  English  people  ;  but 
they  all  of  them,  even  the  cleverest,  lead  such 
a  hard  life."  And  before  this  he  had  already 
written  to  Flaubert,  perhaps  the  innermost  secret 
of  both  their  temperaments,  certainly  the  secret 
of  the  suave  as  well  as  of  the  suspicious  Turgenev  : 
"  We  have  hard  times  to  go  through,  we,  who  are 
born   onlookers." 


CHAPTER    IV 

IT  was  in  October  1871  that  the  purely  Parisian 
phase  of  Turgenev's  life  commenced.  The 
Viardots  had  established  themselves  at 
No.  50,  Rue  de  Douai,  and  the  Russian  took  up 
his  quarters  in  the  third  story  of  the  same  house. 
Here,  as  at  Baden-Baden,  he  experienced  the 
tranquillity  which  was  so  necessary  to  him  as  an 
artist.  "  I  have  got  back  into  my  rut,"  he  wrote 
in  1875  on  his  return  from  a  visit  to  Russia. 
"  Oh,  the  charm  of  days  that  resemble  each 
other  !  "  Certainly,  in  this  Parisian  family  the 
suspicious  Turgenev  was  almost  wholly  silenced. 
With  the  Viardots  he  had  found  that  quietude 
which  had  eluded  him  always  in  his  wanderings, 
that  rest,  as  it  were  from  oneself,  which  evaded 
so  many  of  his  heroes  as  they  rushed  across  great 
distances  in  its  pursuit.  The  days  resembled 
each  other.  That  was  sufficient  for  Turgenev, 
who  was  a  connoisseur  in  all  the  illusions  of 
experience.  In  the  morning  he  would  work,  and 
in  the  afternoon  he  would  go  to  the  Salon  or  he 
would  pay  visits.  In  the  evening  he  would 
accompany  the  Viardots  to  the  theatre.     Above 

97 


98  Two  Russian  Reformers 

all,  there  would  be  music  in  this  home  of  his 
adoption,  music  that  was  worth  listening  to,  as 
Gustave  Flaubert  well  knew.  "  Hier  soir,"  he 
wrote  to  George  Sand,  "  Madame  Viardot  nous 
a  chante  de  I'Alceste  .  .  .  de  pareilles  emotions 
consolent  de  I'existence." 

Externally  at  least  his  life  was  tranquil,  and  his 
reputation  as  a  writer  had  long  been  established 
abroad  as  well  as  at  home.  He  had  been  even 
called,  presumably  without  irony,  "  le  celebre 
Musset  Russe "  and,  rather  less  ineptly,  "  le 
geant  des  Steppes  finnoises."  But  his  very 
popularity  irritated  him.  "  That  bores  me,"  he 
said  frankly.  "  I  am  turning  into  a  picturesque 
old  man."  In  short,  the  suspicious  Turgenev, 
lulled  to  sleep  in  the  suave  atmosphere  of  the 
Viardots'  home,  found  full  scope  for  his  morose 
curiosity  in  the  analysis  of  French  manners  and 
the   French   temperament. 

For  the  rest,  Turgenev  praised  the  French 
nation  and  the  French  individually  according  as 
the  suspicious  Turgenev  that  was  in  him  was  or 
was  not  lulled  into  quiescence.  But  when  a  com- 
patriot brought  the  stereotyped  charges  against 
the  French  home  Turgenev  was  up  in  arms  at  once. 
**  It  is  the  fashion  amongst  us,"  he  protested,  "to 
tear  the  French  to  pieces  on  this  subject  ;  but  I 
am  able  to  tell  you  that  the  French  family  has 
very  much  more  solid  foundations  than  our  own." 
But  the  French  spirit,  though  he  appreciated  its 


Turgenev  99 

exquisite  suavity  and  biting  gaiety,  was  alien  from 
his  meditative  and  ironical  genius.  The  magni- 
loquence of  Hugo,  especially,  irritated  him,  and 
though  he  acknowledged  him  to  be  the  greatest 
lyric  poet  of  his  period,  he  condemned  him  as  a 
novelist.  His  personality  was  essentially  grating 
to  Turgenev.  "  Once,"  he  says,  "  while  I  was  at 
his  house,  we  talked  about  German  poetry.  Victor 
Hugo,  who  does  not  like  anybody  to  speak  in  his 
presence,  interrupted  me,  and  undertook  a  portrait 
of  Goethe.  '  His  best  work,'  said  he  in  an  Olympian 
tone,  '  is  "  Wallenstein."  '  *  Pardon,  dear  master, 
**  Wallenstein "  is  not  by  Goethe.  It  is  by 
Schiller.'  '  It  is  all  the  same  :  I  have  read  neither 
one  nor  the  other  ;  but  I  know  them  much  better 
than  those  who  have  learnt  them  by  heart.'  " 
To  this  superb  statement  the  author  of  "  Smoke  " 
made  no  reply. 

Turgenev  was  never  tired  of  alluding  to  Victor 
Hugo's  vanity,  and  M.  Garchin  is  the  authority 
for  this  extraordinary  anecdote  attributed  to 
the  Russian  novelist.  One  evening,  it  seems,  the 
admirers  of  Victor  Hugo  maintained  in  his  presence 
that  the  street  in  which  he  lived  ought  to  bear  his 
name.  Some  one  then  observed  that  the  street 
was  too  small  and  that  a  more  worthy  one  should 
be  found.  Then  they  began  to  name  street  after 
street  that  seemed  possibly  deserving  of  such  a 
distinction.  The  streets  became  more  and  more 
important  as  the  enthusiasm  increased,  until  at 


100  Two  Russian  Reformers 

last  a  genuine  apostle  maintained  that  **  Paris 
herself  should  esteem  it  an  honour  to  bear  the  name 
of  Hugo."  The  master,  leaning  against  the  mantel- 
piece, listened  quietly  as  this  auction  of  flattery 
proceeded.  Then  suddenly,  turning  to  the  young 
man  who  had  alluded  to  Paris,  he  said  very 
gravely,  *'  Ca  viendra,  mon  cher  ;  9a  viendra  !  " 
So  far  as  his  own  work  was  concerned  Turgenev 
had  no  belief  in  the  expressions  of  French  admira- 
tion. Nor  did  he  believe  that  they  appreciated 
the  national  genius  of  his  country.  "  The  French," 
he  wrote  once,  "recognise  no  originality  whatever 
in  other  peoples.  The  genius  of  England,  of 
Germany,  of  Italy,  is  a  dead  letter  or  almost  a 
dead  letter  to  them  ;  as  for  my  own  country,  do 
not  let  us  speak  of  it  !  .  .  .  Apart  from  their  own 
affairs,  they  are  interested  in  nothing,  they  know 
nothing."  He  was  profoundly  sceptical,  or  pro- 
fessed to  be  so,  about  the  alleged  success  of  the 
French  translations  of  his  books :  "Of  what 
interest  are  they  to  the  French,  our  dreams  and 
our  distracted  heroes  !  .  .  .  My  lovers  are  neither 
gay  nor  voluptuous  !  .  .  .  The  most  insignificant 
romance  of  Octave  Feuillet  gives  them  more 
pleasure  than  all  mine  put  together,"  And  he 
quotes,  as  though  once  and  for  ever  to  sum  up  the 
French  standpoint  towards  Russian  literature, 
the  comment  of  a  very  distinguished  French- 
man upon  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Pushkin  : 
"  C'est  plat,  mon  cher  !  "     Often  indifferent  as  to 


a 

< 
u 


lOl 


Turgenev  103 

his  own  success  in  Paris,  he  was  extremely  anxious 
that  Tolstoy  should  be  appreciated  there,  and  in 
this  connection  Charles  Edmond  has  noted  in  a 
letter  a  characteristic  incident.  "  The  Temps 
had  already  published  some  of  his  books  when, 
chancing  to  meet  him  one  day,  I  remarked  to  him 
that  our  mutual  friend  Hebrard  would  be  very 
glad  to  offer  him  again  the  hospitality  of  the 
Temps. 

"  *  Let  us  go  to  my  rooms,'  replied  Turgenev 
after  a  moment's  thought,  '  and  I  can  promise 
both  you  and  Hebrard  a  surprise  with  which  you 
will  be  more  than  satisfied.' 

"  This  was  the  first  time  that  I  had  ever  heard 
Ivan  Sergueivitch  speak  in  such  a  flattering  way 
of  his  own  merits.  On  arriving  at  his  rooms, 
Turgenev  took  from  his  writing-table  a  roll  of 
paper.  I  give  what  he  said  word  for  word. 
'  Listen,'  he  said :  '  Here  is  copy  for  your  paper 
of  an  absolutely  first-rate  kind.  This  means 
that  I  am  not  its  author.  The  master,  for  he  is 
a  real  master,  is  almost  unknown  ;  but  I  assure 
you,  upon  my  soul  and  conscience.  .  .  .' 

"  Two  days  afterwards  there  appeared  in  the 
Temps  '  Les  Souvenirs  de  Sebastopol,'  by  Leon 
Tolstoy." 

In  precisely  the  same  spirit  of  disinterested 
kindness  Turgenev  did  his  best  to  make  Zola 
known  in  Russia.  He  used  to  boast,  indeed, 
of  having  discovered  the  talent  of  Zola,  though  it 

7 


104  Two  Russian  Reformers 

was  utterly  antipathetic  to  Turgenev,  who  made 
this  comment  on  the  creator  of  the  "  Comedie 
Humaine  "  :  **  Balzac,  c'est  un  ethnographe  : 
ce  n'est  pas  un  artiste."  Naturally,  he  con- 
sidered Zola  still  less  an  artist,  but  he  did  his 
very  best  to  help  him  in  the  comparatively  earty 
days  when  help  was  needed.  One  anecdote  of 
Turgenev' s  sheds  a  curious  light  on  the  famous 
exponent  of  naturalism.  Shortly  after  the  pub- 
lication of  "  L'Assommoir "  Turgenev,  at  the 
suggestion  of  some  ladies,  invited  Zola  to  read 
aloud  from  his  own  works,  and  after  some  per- 
suasion he  consented.  "  The  ladies,"  narrates 
Turgenev,  "  expected  to  see  a  Bohemian  with 
shock-hair  standing  on  end,  uttering  right  and 
left  coarse  words,  impertinences,  perhaps  some- 
thing worse.  They  were  rather  surprised  when 
they  saw  that  the  champion  of  naturalism  was  a 
quite  presentable  young  man,  with  his  hair  cut 
short,  in  evening  clothes  and  wearing  white 
gloves.  None  the  less  they  preserved  the  hope 
that  Zola  would  be  worthy  of  himself  during  the 
reading,  and  waited  for  that  moment  with  im- 
patience. It  arrived  at  last :  Zola  mounted  the 
platform  .  .  .  but  here  he  produced  a  quite 
unexpected  scandal.  Zola  grew  white,  grew  red, 
and  remained  for  some  seconds  dumb,  without 
being  able  to  utter  a  word.  He  made  a  brave 
attempt  to  commence  the  reading,  but  alas !  he 
himself  did  not   recognise  his  own  voice.     His 


Turgenev  105 

teeth  clashed  against  one  another.  The  book 
swayed  in  his  hand.  He  was  unable  to  see.  He 
mumbled  something  as  he  looked  at  the  book, 
but  his  audience  no  longer  listened  to  him.  The 
ladies  covered  their  lips  with  their  handkerchiefs 
and  burst  out  laughing  ;  the  gentlemen  made 
unheard-of  efforts  to  remain  serious ;  in  short  the 
scandal  was  complete."  Then  and  there  Zola 
made  a  vow  never  to  read  in  public  again, 
and  years  afterwards  he  remarked  to  Turgenev, 
"  Even  now  when  I  recall  at  night  that  trifle,  I 
become  hot  and  cold  in  turn." 

Turgenev,  on  the  other  hand,  appears  to  have 
been  an  intensely  sympathetic  reader.  On  one 
occasion  he  read  from  his  own  "  Annals  of 
a  Sportsman,"  and  afterwards  a  fragment  of 
Pushkin.  "  His  own  work,"  comments  Pav- 
lovsky,  "  he  read  calmly,  with  mastery,  so  that 
the  public,  forgetting  the  reader,  was  entirely 
absorbed  by  the  pictures  that  he  sketched  during 
his  reading  before  their  eyes.  But,  when  the 
turn  of  the  '  Tziganes  '  arrived,  the  reader's  voice 
suddenly  vibrated.  His  figure  bent,  his  face  grew 
pale.  Moved,  almost  carried  away  by  the  sub- 
ject, he  appeared  to  have  forgotten  the  audience 
and  everybody  else.  He  gave  himself  up  without 
reserve  to  the  wonderful  illusion.  The  final 
scene  he  read  with  a  voice  scarcely  audible. 
When  he  had  finished  and  come  down  from 
the  platform  his  hand  was  shaking.     It  seemed 


io6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

to  me  that  he  was  weeping,  he  who  never 
wept." 

But  Turgenev's  sympathy  was  not  merely  the 
sympath}'  of  the  artist,  hmited  to  works  of  art. 
He,  who  was  all  his  life  assailed  by  malevolent 
personal  enemies,  was  never  weary  of  performing 
the  most  disinterested  acts  of  kindness.  But 
even  here  the  essential  irony  of  his  temperament 
revealed  itself,  and  he  would  give,  knowing  all 
the  time  that  he  was  being  victimised  by  an  im- 
postor. For  example,  a  certain  young  woman 
in  distress  in  Paris  insisted  upon  visiting  Turgenev, 
from  whom  she  immediately  borrowed  750  francs. 
Shortly  after  this  imposition  Turgenev  explained 
to  a  visitor  that  in  his  opinion  the  lady  was  a 
comedienne,  that  her  distress  was  nothing  very 
terrible,  and  that  she  was  not  separated,  as  she 
pretended  to  be,  from  her  husband.  Moreover, 
he  prophesied  that  he  had  not  heard  the  last 
of  her  and  that  she  would  not  leave  Paris.  In 
this  one  respect,  however,  he  was  wrong.  The 
lady  did  leave  Paris,  and  shortly  afterwards  wrote 
to  him  from  Russia.  The  letter  said  nothing 
about  the  return  of  the  750  francs,  but  reproached 
Turgenev  for  being  anxious  to  rid  himself  of  the 
writer.  It  ended  with  the  modest  demand  for  a 
life  pension. 

On  another  occasion  a  young  girl  came  to  Paris 
for  reasons  connected  with  her  health.  She  was  a 
writer,  and  Turgenev  put  himself  to  endless  trouble 


Turgenev  107 

on  her  account,  introduced  her  to  people,  went 
from  hotel  to  hotel  in  search  of  a  lodging  for  her, 
and  even  presented  her  to  doctors  who,  according 
to  him,  offered  their  services  free.  In  short,  he 
did  everything  in  his  power  to  help  her — first  of 
all  because  he  believed  in  her  talent,  and  secondly 
because  she  had  shown  herself  capable  of  self- 
sacrifice.  For,  in  her  own  wretched  Russian 
village,  the  young  writer  had  had  compassion 
upon  a  poor  sick  little  girl  whom  her  own  parents 
had  neglected.  She  had  taken  her  with  her  to 
Moscow,  paid  all  her  expenses,  and  done  every- 
thing for  her  that  a  mother  could  do  for  a  daughter. 
Finally,  she  succeeded  in  curing  her,  but  at  the 
cost  of  her  own  health.  This  was  a  story  in 
which  Turgenev  delighted,  and  he  who  was  so 
profoundly  suspicious  of  great  reputations  lowered 
his  voice  when  speaking  of  this  poor  unknown 
writer. 

There  were  only  too  man}^  such  cases,  and 
nobody  knew  how  to  deal  with  them  as  did 
Turgenev,  whose  malice  was  almost  proverbial. 
But  no  irony  pervaded  these  little  comedies  of 
kindness.  The  world-novelist  would  carefully 
think  out  plans  to  help  proud  young  people  to 
whom  one  dared  not  offer  the  very  suspicion  of 
patronage.  Sometimes  a  translation  would  be 
commissioned,  for  no  particular  reason.  At  other 
times  a  manuscript  would  be  accepted  by  a 
journal  to  which  it  had  never  been  submitted. 


io8  Two  Russian  Reformers 

On  one  occasion  at  least  an  author  had  been  paid 
in  advance,  but  finding  that  his  manuscript  did 
not  appear  in  print,  he  began  to  make  inquiries. 
Then  he  would  be  told  that  the  editor  had  gone 
to  some  place  or  other,  nobody  knew  where,  or 
perhaps  that  the  manuscript  had  gone  astray  in 
the  most  unexpected  fashion. 

There  are  innumerable  stories  of  such  kindness 
on  the  part  of  the  malicious  Turgenev.  Even 
towards  the  very  end,  in  January  1883,  a  young 
Russian  girl  came  to  him  for  help.  She  had 
wished  to  enter  the  school  of  medicine,  but  on 
arriving  she  had  found  that  she  was  too  late  for 
registration.  The  novelist  promised  to  do  what 
he  could  for  her,  and  undertook  a  long  correspond- 
ence on  the  subject.  Being  too  ill  to  approach 
the  authorities  in  person,  he  persuaded  one  of 
his  friends  to  do  so.  Not  content  with  this, 
hearing  that  the  young  girl  was  delicate,  the 
author  of  "  Smoke  "  anxiously  recommended 
her  to  wear  flannel  vests,  and  asked  her 
two  weeks  afterwards  if  she  had  followed  his 
advice. 

Naturally,  he  was  constantly  victimised.  Some- 
times he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  took  the 
imposture  as  a  matter  of  course.  On  the  subject 
of  one  impostor  at  least  he  showed  himself  almost 
a  clairvoyant.  "  That  man,"  he  said,  "  will 
become  a  collaborator  of  Katkoff ;  he  will  betray 
the  Nihilists  with  whom  he  is  now  associated  and 


Turgencv  109 

will  cover  them  with  mud  ;  he  will  publish  his 
recollections  of  me  after  my  death,  and  will  pose 
as  my  intimate  friend.  As  he  has  letters  from 
me,  people  will  easily  believe  in  our  friendship, 
and  will  accept  as  absolute  truth  every  word 
that  he  will  put  into  my  mouth.''  This  prophecy 
was  fulfilled  in  detail ;  and  about  another  man 
who  had  deceived  him  Turgenev's  clairvoyance 
was  no  less  unerring. 

But  before  anything  else  in  the  world  Turgenev 
was  an  artist.  "  Has  any  misfortune  happened  to 
you  ?  "  he  said  once  to  a  friend.  "  Sit  down  and 
write  '  This  or  that  has  happened,  I  have  experi- 
enced this  or  that  emotion.'  The  grief  will  pass 
and  the  excellent  page  will  remain.  This  page 
sometimes  may  become  the  nucleus  of  a  great 
work,  which  will  be  artistic  since  it  will  be  true, 
actually  lifelike." 

"It  is  all  very  well,"  interrupted  his  friend, 
"  to  say,  *  Sit  down  and  write,'  when  a  man  has 
perhaps  but  one  wish,  namely  to  blow  his  brains 
out." 

"  Good  !  What  does  it  matter  ?  Write  that 
too  !  If  all  the  unhappy  artists  were  to  blow  their 
brains  out,  there  would  be  none  left,  for  they  are 
all  more  or  less  unhappy  ;  there  cannot  be  artists 
who  are  actually  happy.  Happiness  is  repose, 
and  repose  creates  nothing.  As  for  me,  I  always 
keep  my  journal,  in  which  I  write  down  every- 
thing that  interests  me.     In  that  journal  am  I 


no  Two  Russian  Reformers 

at  home;  I  judge,  and  I  reverse  judgments,  on 
all  men  and  things." 

"  You  mtend  to  publish  it  one  day  ?  " 
"  Never !     I   have    enjoined   Madame   Viardot 
to  burn  it  immediately  after  my  death,  and  she 
will  fulfil  my  wish  religiously." 

Apart  from  the  Viardots  and  a  very  few  of  his 
compatriots,  he  was  most  at  his  ease  with  Gustave 
Flaubert,  whose  work  he  had  always  admired  in 
spite  of  its  innate  antagonism  to  his  own.  Flaubert 
met  him  for  the  first  time  in  1866,  when  he  sat 
next  to  him  at  dinner.  "  That  man,"  he  wrote 
to  George  Sand,  *'  has  such  an  exquisite  power  of 
producing  impressions,  even  in  conversation,  that 
he  has  shown  me  George  Sand  leaning  over  a 
balcony  in  Madame  Viardot' s  chateau  at  Rosay." 
Three  years  before  this,  however,  on  February  23, 
1863,  we  find  the  first  note  on  Turgenev  in  the 
"  Journal  des  Goncourts  "  :  *'  Dinner  at  Magny's  ; 
Charles  Edmond  brought  us  Turgenev,  that 
foreign  writer  with  such  a  delicate  talent,  the 
author  of  the  '  Memoires  d'un  Seigneur  Russe  ' 
and  of  the  *  Hamlet  Russe.'  He  is  a  charming 
colossus,  a  suave  giant  with  white  hair,  who  seems 
to  be  the  good  genius  of  some  mountain  or  forest. 
He  is  handsome,  gloriously  handsome,  enormously 
handsome,  with  the  blue  of  the  heavens  in  his 
eyes,  with  the  charm  of  the  Russian  sing-song 
accent,  with  that  melody  in  which  there  lurks  a 
suspicion  of  the  child  and  of  the  negro.     Pleased 


Turgenev  iii 

and  put  at  his  ease  by  the  ovation  that  we  gave 
him,  he  talked  to  us  curiously  on  the  subject  of 
Russian  literature,  which  he  maintains,  from  the 
novel  to  the  play,  to  be  regularly  launched 
upon  the  waves  of  realism."  Seven  years  later 
the  intimacy  between  Turgenev  and  Flaubert 
was  firmly  established.  "  Apart  from  you  and 
Turgenev,"  writes  the  Master  to  George  Sand, 
"  I  do  not  know  a  human  being  with  whom  I  can 
talk  over  things  which  I  have  really  at  heart." 
After  the  War  Turgenev  became  a  regular  habitue 
at  the  Magny  dinners.  Perhaps  it  was  the  craving 
for  serenity  on  the  part  of  Flaubert  which  endeared 
him  to  the  Russian  in  spite  of  so  many  differences 
of  race  and  temperament.  Flaubert  from  early 
childhood  had  had  a  curious  antipathy  to  violent 
action,  and  owing  to  his  inexhaustible  w^ork  his 
life  had  been  more  than  ordinarily  sedentary. 
"  It  exasperated  him,"  notes  his  pupil,  Guy  de 
Maupassant,  "  to  see  people  walking  or  moving 
about  him,  and  he  declared  in  his  mordant, 
sonorous,  always  rather  theatrical  voice,  that  it 
was  not  philosophic."  "One  can  only  write  and 
think  seated,  he  said."  This  curious  antipathy 
to  activity,  this  surprised  and  helpless  irritation 
at  merely  physical  disturbances  is  conspicuous 
in  Flaubert's  letters  to  George  Sand  during  the 
Franco-Prussian  War. 

The  friendship  with  Flaubert  helps  to  explain 
much  that  is  enigmatic  in  the  character  and  in  the 


112  Two  Russian  Reformers 

work  of  Turgenev.  It  explains  to  no  small  extent 
the  Turgenevian  hero  with  whom  he  has  been  so 
often  reproached.  It  explains  to  no  small  extent 
his  utter  indifference  to  the  hero  in  our  own 
Anglo-Saxon  sense.  He  was  at  home  with  Flau- 
bert, but  never  at  home  with  the  brothers  de 
Goncourt,  or  even  with  the  author  of  "Sapho."  The 
so-called  quarrel  with  Alphonse  Daudet,  which 
was  so  foolishly  exploited  after  Turgenev's  death, 
was  in  reality  nothing  more  or  less  than  an 
involuntary  clashing  of  sensitive  but  alien  tem- 
peraments. But  this  involuntary  clashing  with 
Daudet,  and  this  equally  involuntary  "fitting-in" 
with  Flaubert  do  at  least  hint  at  the  mental  pro- 
cesses of  this  Slav  giant,  whose  eyes  were  singularly 
alert  in  contrast  with  that  slow  meditative  serenity 
of  pessimism  which  was  perhaps  the  innermost 
secret  of  Ivan  Turgenev's  soul.  Flaubert  alone, 
perhaps,  appealed  to  the  naive,  calm  Turgenev 
at  these  Parisian  dinners ;  while  the  other  guests, 
in  a  more  or  less  degree,  roused  that  suspicious 
twin-self  whom  the  author  of  "  Salammbo  "  so 
easily  disarmed. 

For  Turgenev — he  has  confessed  it  himself — 
a  work  of  art  was  in  no  sense  of  the  word  an 
expression  of  the  will,  but  rather  the  unburdening 
of  some  impression,  almost,  if  not  actually,  physical 
in  its  intensity.  He  was,  in  short,  an  excellent 
illustration  of  hypersesthesia.  "  The  higher  we 
rise,"  says  Lombroso,  "  in  the  moral  scale,  the 


Turgenev  113 

more  sensibility  increases  ;    it  is  the  highest  in 
great  minds,  and  is  the  source  of  their  misfortunes 
as  well  as  of  their  triumphs.     They  feel  and  notice 
more  things,  and  with  greater  vivacity  and  tenacity, 
than  other  men  ;    their  recollections  are  richer, 
and    their    mental    combinations    more    fruitful. 
Little  things,  accidents  that  ordinary  people  do 
not  see  or  notice,  are  observed  by  them,  brought 
together  in  a  thousand  ways,  which  we  call  crea- 
tions, and  which  are  only  binary  and  quaternary 
combinations  of  sensations."     To  no  human  being 
could  these  words  be   applied  more  aptly  than 
to  Turgenev,  for  whom  some  quite  physical  im- 
pression would  be  the  embryo  of  a  work  of   art. 
Then,  for  weeks,  he  would  shut  himself  up  in  his 
room,  walking  up  and  down,  groaning,  "  like  a 
lion  in  a  cage."     After  which  he  would  sit  down 
to  write  with  all  the  facility  of  one  whose  sub- 
consciousness  is  being   given   full  play.     Actual 
memories  renewed  the  first  salt  of  their  sorrow 
in  these  pictures.      "  I    must    describe   her,"    he 
writes,  "  in  her  open  coffin,  when  her  parents  come 
to   kiss   her   according   to   custom.  ...  I   have 
taken  part  in  farewells  of  this  kind.     There  is  my 
day   spoilt  !  "     But   when   his   friends   protested 
that  if  these  tragic  pictures  made  him  ill,  it  would 
be  better  to  change  the  endings  of  his  stories, 
Turgenev   would   not   hear   of   such   concessions. 
"  It  ends  badly,"  he  would  say,  "  because  I  wish 
to  unburden  myself  of  a  personal  recollection." 


114  Two  Russian  Reformers 

This  admission  explains,  if  anything  in  the  world 
can  explain,  that  aroma  of  loss,  of  regret,  of 
infinite  happiness  just  missed,  which  pervades 
the  very  slightest  of  his  stories. 

To  Flaubert  he  could  reveal  every  side  of  his 
nature  without  the  slightest  suspicion  or  fear  of 
misunderstanding,  and  in  a  single  letter,  written 
in  1872,  he  shows  himself  as  an  agreeable  and 
kindly  man  of  the  world,  and  as  a  meditative 
artist.  "  I  shall  go,"  he  writes  in  this  letter  from 
Russia,  "  straight  as  an  arrow  to  Paris,  then  from 
there  to  my  daughter  in  Touraine,  who  is  on  the 
point  of  making  me  a  grandfather  ;  then  from 
there  to  Valery-sur-Somme,  where  I  shall  rejoin 
my  old  friends,  the  Viardots.  I  shall  idle  and  I 
shall  work  if  I  can,  then  I  shall  go  to  Paris,  in  order 
to  meet  there  one  Flaubert,  whom  I  love  much, 
and  with  whom  I  shall  go  to  his  home  at  Croisset, 
or  to  Madame  Sand,  at  Nohant,  as  it  appears  she 
wants  to  have  us  there.  And  then  from  October 
onwards,  Paris.  There  you  are !  "  That  was 
Turgenev,  the  amiable  kindly  Parisian  by  adoption. 

But  in  this  very  letter  he  translates  something 
of  the  savour  of  his  native  Russia.  "  I  believe,  as 
you  do,  that  a  visit  to  Russia  alone  with  me 
would  do  you  good,  but  it  should  be  spent  wander- 
ing about  the  paths  of  an  old  country  garden, 
steeped  in  rustic  scents,  and  filled  with  straw- 
berries, birds,  sunshine  and  shadow,  all  equally 
sunk  in  sleep,  and  two  hundred  acres  of  waving 


Turgenev  115 

rye  all  around  us  ;  it  used  to  be  delicious.  One 
finds  inertia  stealing  over  one,  together  with  a 
sense  of  solemnity,  vastness,  and  monotony ; 
a  sense  which  has  something  animal  in  it,  and 
something  divine.  One  comes  out  of  it  as  if  one 
had  had  some  strengthening  bath,  and  takes  up 
again  the  ordinary  mill  of  existence."  Such 
was  Turgenev  in  his  almost  naive  relations  with 
Gustave  Flaubert.  But  undoubtedly  some  of  his 
Parisian  associates  aroused  in  him  that  involuntary 
antagonism  of  suspicion  from  which  no  single  one 
of  his  books  can  be  said  to  be  wholly  free. 

Nor  in  Russia  could  he  yield  himself  always  to 
the  sluggish,  dreaming  influences,  to  the  quietude 
of  "  under  the  water."  There  he  would  refer 
constantly  to  foreign  friends  and  foreign  experi- 
ences, just  as  in  Paris  he  was  perpetually  haunted 
by  the  sense  of  nostalgia.  But  in  spite  of  this 
he  showed  himself  a  real  cosmopolitan  in  litera- 
ture, translating  Goethe  and  Swinburne  as  well  as 
his  own  Pushkin.  He  was  a  welcome  guest  at 
Nohant  no  less  than  at  Croisset,  and  George  Sand 
writes  of  him  with  genuine  appreciation  :  "  Le 
grand  Moscove  est  venu  chez  nous  !  .  .  .  Quel  aim- 
able  et  digne  homme  !  Et  quel  talent  modeste  !  On 
I'adore  ici,  et  j  e  donne  I'exemple. ' '  His  charm  was 
felt  equally  at  the  Magny  dinners,  as  the  Journal 
notes  :  "  Le  doux  geant,  I'aimable  barbare  nous 
charme,  des  le  souper,  par  ce  melange  de  naivete 
et  de  finesse,  la  seduction  de  la  race  slave  relevee 


ii6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

chez  lui,  par  I'originalit^  d'un  esprit  personnel,  et 
par  un  savoir  immense  et  cosmopolite."  But 
even  in  the  intimacy  of  these  dinners  the  Slav 
remained  always  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land. 
These  realists  were  to  him  the  very  ravagers  of 
mystery,  who  would  describe  physical  passion 
imagining  that  they  had  interpreted  love.  He  was 
constitutionally  antipathetic  to  their  habit  of 
thought.  For  him,  realist  though  he  was  after  his 
own  fashion,  mystery  was  essential,  was  in  a  way 
the  only  current  to  which  his  sensitive  genius 
would  ever  respond.  It  was  impossible  for  him 
to  be  really  en  rapport  with  that  Parisian  cynicism 
which  pervaded  the  Magny  dinners  in  one  phase 
or  other,  even  if  it  were  only  the  cynicism  of 
fatigued  regret.  It  was  not  a  question  of  a  man 
being  out  of  touch  with  his  fellow  guests  ;  it  was 
a  question  of  the  involuntary  revolt  of  a  dreamer 
against  those  who  would  tear  him  from  his  dream. 
That  is  what  he  could  not  forgive  these  talented 
Frenchmen,  and  that  is  why  he  so  often  turned 
in  mind  from  the  centre  of  the  world's  civilisation 
to  those  desolate  steppes  whose  secret  was  his 
own. 

The  famous  dinners  were  called  "  the  dinners 
of  the  Hissed  Authors."  Flaubert,  Alphonse 
Daudet  has  told  us,  was  a  member  of  this  dining 
society  through  the  failure  of  his  "  Candidat," 
Zola  through  the  "  Bouton  de  Rose,"  Goncourt 
on   account   of   "  Henriette   Marechal."     Daudet 


Turgenev  117 

himself  claimed  right  by  his  "  Arlesienne."  "  As 
for  Turgenev,"  he  adds,  "  he  pledged  his  word 
that  he  had  been  hissed  in  Russia,  and  as  it  was 
a  long  way  off,  we  did  not  go  there  to  find  out." 
One  cannot  exaggerate  the  importance  of  these 
dinners  in  relation  to  Turgenev,  because  at  them 
he  was  the  representative  and  interpreter  of  the 
Russian  temperament  in  the  very  heart  of  Europe. 
It  was  at  these  dinners  that  with  an  almost  sur- 
reptitious tenderness  he  indicated  rather  than 
expressed  the  enigmatic  charm  of  la  femme  Russe. 
It  was  at  these  dinners  that  in  his  high  monotone 
he  hinted  at  the  innermost  secret  of  his  art — the 
"  couleur  toute  particuliere  "  of  love.  He  found 
his  own  chosen  colour  of  love  almost  invariably 
in  a  Russian  woman.  "  Aucune  autre,"  he  said 
once,  "  ne  pent  aimer  d'un  amour  aussi  absolu, 
aussi  desinteresse.  Elle  aime  le  peuple,  et  elle  va 
dans  ses  ranges  sans  phrases ;  elle  va  et  elle  le  sert ; 
elle  s'enfouit  dans  un  village  ;  elle  oublie  sa  propre 
personne,  se  refuse  toute  affection  personnelle,  et 
meme  la  maternite." 

At  these  dinners,  too,  he  protested  against  that 
over-lucidity  of  Western  logic  which  seemed  to 
him  inimical  to  what  is  best  both  in  life  and  in 
art.  He  pleaded  for  the  hrouillard  slav.  With 
the  Russians,  he  reasoned,  this  mist  was  a  pre- 
server. On  a  snow  plough,  for  example,  one  is 
told  not  to  think  of  the  cold,  for  if  one  thinks  of 
it  one  will  die.     "  Very  well,"  reasoned  Turgenev, 


ii8  Two  Russian  Reformers 

**  thanks  to  that  mist  of  which  I  was  just  speaking, 
the  Slav  with  the  chasse-neige  does  not  think  of 
the  cold,  and  with  me  in  the  same  way  the  idea  of 
death  effaces  itself  and  soon  glides  away."  This 
Slavonic  mistiness,  this  evasion  of  the  last  insist- 
ence of  logic,  this  shrinking  from  the  final  verdict 
of  justice,  seemed  to  Turgenev  to  lie  at  the  very 
core  of  the  Russian  character.  On  Sunday, 
March  5,  1876,  he  is  quoted  in  the  "Journal"  as 
follows  : 

"  Je  n'ai,  jamais  si  bien,  vu  qu'hier,  combien 
les  races  sont  differentes  ;  9a  m' a  fort  reve  toute 
la  nuit.  Nous  sommes  cependant,  n'est-ce  pas,  nous 
des  gens  du  meme  metier,  des  gens  de  plume  ?  Eh 
bien,  hier,  dans  Madame  Caverlet,  quand  le  jeune 
homme  a  dit  a  I'amant  de  sa  mere  qui  allait  em- 
brasser  sa  soeur  :  *  Je  vous  defends  d'embrasser 
cette  jeune  fille.'  Eh  bien,  j'ai  eprouve  un  mouve- 
ment  de  repulsion,  et  il  y  aurait  eu  cinq  cents 
Russes  dans  la  salle,  qu'ils  auraient  eprouve  le 
meme  sentiment  .  .  .  et  Flaubert,  et  les  gens 
qui  etaient  dans  la  loge,  ne  I'ont  pas  eprouve  ce 
moment  de  repulsion.  ...  J'ai  beaucoup  reflechi 
dans  la  nuit.  .  .  .  Oui,  vous  etes  bien  des  latins, 
il  y  a  chez  vous  du  romain  et  de  sa  religion  du 
droit,  en  un  mot,  vous  etes  des  hommes  de  la 
loi.  .  .  .  Nous,  nous  ne  sommes  pas  ainsi.  .  .  . 
Comment  dire  cela  ?  .  .  .  Voyons,  supposez  chez 
nous  un  rond,  autour  duquel  sont  tons  les  vieux 
Russes,  puis  derriere,  pele-mele,  les  jeunes  Russes. 


Turgcnev  119 

Eh  bien,  les  vieux  Russes  disent  oui  ou  non — 
auxquels  acquiescent  ceux  qui  sont  derriere.  Alois, 
figurez-vous  que  devant  ce  '  oui  ou  non  '  la  loi  n'est 
plus,  n'existe  plus,  car  la  loi  chez  les  Russes  ne 
se  cristallise  pas,  comme  chez  vous.  Un  exemple, 
nous  sommes  voleurs  en  Russie,  et  cependant 
qu'un  homme  ait  commis  vingt  vols  qu'il  avoue, 
mais  qu'il  soit  constate  qu'il  y  ait  eu  besoin,  qu'il 
ait  faim,  il  est  acquitte.  .  .  .  Oui,  vous  etes  des 
hommes  de  la  loi,  de  I'honneur,  nous,  tout  auto- 
cratises  que  nous  soyons,  nous  sommes  des  hommes, 
et  comme  il  cherche  son  mot,  je  lui  jette  *  de 
I'humanite.'  'Oui,  c'est  cela,'  reprend-il,  'nous 
nous  sommes  des  hommes  moins  conventionnels, 
nous  sommes  des  hommes  de  I'humanite.'  " 

One  can  almost  see  him,  speaking  in  his  high, 
nervous  voice  in  that  gentle  sing-song  French, 
towering  above  these  men  of  the  world  as  he 
reveals  the  complex  barbarism  of  his  race.  There 
is  no  mockery  in  those  enigmatic  eyes  as  he  utters 
the  last  secret  of  the  Slav,  who  pardons  easily 
because  he  can  fully  beUeve  in  no  single  one  of  the 
shibboleths  of  the  centuries.  Nothing  has  crys- 
talUsed  in  the  mobile  heart  of  the  Slav,  not  even 
regret  itself.  Intellectual  revolt  from  any  con- 
ventional custom  means  little  or  nothing  to 
him,  because  the  stamp  of  convention  has  pressed 
only  upon  the  surface  of  a  nature  at  once 
wistful  and  tameless.  Other  Russian  writers 
had  shared   this  synthesis  of   emancipation  and 

8 


120  Two  Russian  Reformers 

limitation  so  fully  that  they  were  unaware  of 
its  existence.  Turgenev  alone,  or  almost  alone, 
stood,  so  to  speak,  outside  of  the  Russian  point  of 
view,  so  that  even  in  sharing  and  defending  it  he 
was  at  least  able  to  analyse  it.  But  this  inter- 
preter to  the  West,  in  spite  of  his  preference  for 
the  crystallisation  of  art,  was  essentially  of  his 
own  people,  and  in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  " 
one  sees  how  closely  allied  he  was  in  nature  to  the 
simplest  of  his  compatriots. 

But  before  turning  to  the  book  through  which 
was  consummated  the  great  wish  of  his  life,  let 
us  turn  to  a  less  kindly,  to  a  more  suspicious 
analysis  of  the  Russian  character. 

It  has  been  often  remarked  that  in  "  On  the 
Eve  "  the  one  individual  capable  of  action  is  not 
a  Russian  at  all,  but  a  Bulgarian.  In  no  other 
book,  not  even  in  "  Virgin  Soil,"  is  there  com- 
municated the  atmosphere  of  a  national  blow 
being  struck  for  the  cause  of  liberty.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  it  is  a  foreigner  and  not  a  Russian  who 
is  prepared  to  strike  it. 

With  Insarov,  the  Bulgarian,  we  are  a  long 
way  from  Rudin  and  Lavretsky,  a  long  way  from 
those  powerless  leaders  who  shrank  involuntarily 
from  the  abyss  towards  which  enthusiasts,  help- 
less as  themselves,  were  constantly  driving  them. 
Insarov  is  a  man  of  action  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
sense.  In  almost  every  one  of  Turgenev's  novels 
we  are  introduced  to  the  people  who  are  waiting  ; 


Turgenev  121 

in  "  On  the  Eve  "  we  meet  at  last  the  man  for 
whom  they  wait.  He  is  harassed  by  no  doubts 
as  to  side-issues ;  he  is  wilUng  to  strike  at  any 
moment.  But  around  him  there  clusters  the  old 
familiar  group  of  talkers  about  action.  They,  at 
least,  are  Russians,  though  Shubin,  the  sculptor, 
is  French  on  his  mother's  side.  Shubin,  indeed, 
accentuates  even  more  than  any  of  Turgenev's 
wholly  Russian  characters  the  gulf  between  the 
inspiration  of  the  moment  and  the  sustained 
accomplishment  of  one's  purpose.  With  his  quick 
artist's  hands  he  fashions  busts  and  statues  only 
to  destroy  them.  He  lends  life  to  his  very  dreams 
only  to  parody  them.  It  is  as  though  in  this  one 
character  there  were  typified  every  apostle  of 
Russian  liberty  whose  voice  was  his  first  and  his 
last  sacrifice.  But  Turgenev  does  not  caricature. 
He  draws  no  moral  antithesis  between  the  man 
who  is  waiting  without  waste  of  words  to  shed  his 
heart's  blood,  and  the  man  who  seeks  passionately 
to  express  what  he  is  unable  to  feel.  On  the 
contrary,  Shubin  possesses  that  artistic  tempera- 
ment which,  Turgenev  knew  through  his  own 
sombre  experience,  carried  with  it  its  own  con- 
demnation and  its  own  punishment. 

It  is  in  Elena,  however,  that  we  have  the  deepest 
study,  perhaps  not  only  in  "  On  the  Eve  "  but  in 
all  the  novels  of  Turgenev.  Nor  has  he  expressed 
more  clearly  in  any  other  book  his  individual 
attitude  towards  Nature.      When  Odysseus  met 


123  Two  Russian  Reformers 

the  Princess  Nausicaa  in  the  hour  of  his  need,  he 
compared  her  with  a  young  palm-tree,  and  for 
centuries  the  writers  of  all  countries  have  been 
imitating  his  exquisite  adroitness.     But  instead 
of  being  reminded  of  a  product  of  Nature  in  the 
presence  of  a  beautiful  woman,  Turgenev  is  re- 
minded of  a  beautiful  woman  through  the  medium 
of  Nature's  mood. 
I       Bersenyev,  the  typical  Turgenevian  hero,  the 
;    man  who  looks  on,  the  man  who  half  loves  and 
half  strives,  even  he  detects  in  the  faint  summer 
stir  of  leaves  the  phantom  frou-frou  of  a  woman's 
skirts.     And  gradually,  as  all  the  drowsy  scents 
and  sounds  crowd  in  upon  his  senses,  they  become 
crystallised,  as  it  were,  into  the  image  of  a  Russian 
girl,  as  fresh  and  virginal  as  though  she  had  just 
awaked  to  Uf e  with  those  rustling  leaves  of  summer. 
It  is  Elena,  and  Shubin  also  loves  her  or  tries  to 
love    her    after    his    fashion.     Nobody,    even    in 
these  novels  of  the  last  intimate  analysis,  comes 
quite  so  close  to  us  as  Elena.     It  is  for  her  to 
utter  much  that  Natalya  only  dared  to  hope.     It 
is  for  her  to  act  while  Liza  could  only  bow  before 
the  storm  of  fate.     If  in  her  girlhood  she  had  shared 
the  vague  longings  of  these  and  so  many  others, 
she  at  least  recognised,  when  she  met  him,  the 
man  for  whom   she  had  been  waiting.     Unlike 
Natalya,  she  could  not  be  deceived  by  the  vehe- 
mence  of  chatterers.     Unlike  Liza,  she  accepted 
gratefully    the   ultimate   sacrifice.     And   beyond 


Tufgcnev  123 

either  of  them  there  was  articulate  in  her  the 
Russian  capacity  for  pity.  At  first  it  had  been 
centred  upon  animals.  Starved  dogs,  homeless 
cats,  sparrows,  all  maimed  and  helpless  things 
found  a  protector  in  Elena.  But  all  the  time  she 
has  been  waiting,  like  a  young  conscript,  for  the 
call  of  action.  One  realises  this  waiting  in  all 
the  heroines  of  Turgenev's  novels,  but  never  more 
so  than  in  the  heroine  of  this  book,  in  whose  very 
title  one  seems  to  read  the  protracted  "  At  last ! 
at  last  !  " 

When  Insarov  meets  her  for  the  first  time  she 
is  not  consciously  impressed  by  him  as  melodrama 
would  have  her  impressed.  He  is  so  silent,  and 
in  spite  of  his  strength  so  non-heroic  in  his  personal 
appearance.  But  from  the  very  beginning  she  has 
sub-consciously  divined  that  this  man  is  not  as 
others,  that  he  is  absorbed  by  something  beyond 
the  mere  regulations  of  external  routine,  the 
mere  acquiescence  of  habit  from  which  she  would 
enfranchise  her  soul.  She  recognises  something 
grand  and  terrible  in  the  idea  of  liberating  one's 
country,  and  this  man  is  really  in  touch  with 
a  movement  for  national  liberty.  With  him  it 
is  not  merely  words  ;  with  him  at  last  it  is  on 
the  eve. 

And  then  there  happens  a  little  incident  that 
translates  her  girlish  confidence  into  a  strange 
new  world.  Anna  Vassilyevna,  her  mother,  has 
arranged  a  picnic,  and  they  drive  with  the  young 


124  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Bulgarian  to  see  some  ruins.  The  weather  is 
dehghtful,  and  they  enjoy  themselves  immensely, 
when  suddenly  a  party  of  noisy  Germans  obtrudes 
itself  upon  them.  One  of  these,  more  drunk  than 
his  friends,  accosts  the  Russian  ladies.  Shubin, 
the  artist,  greets  him  with  words  of  malignant 
wit,  which  the  German  parries  by  the  mere  power 
of  obtuseness.  Even  in  this  little  crisis  clever 
conversation  counts  for  less  than  nothing.  The 
German  sweeps  the  sculptor  aside  as  though  he 
were  an  obtrusive  twig,  and  continues  his  im- 
portunities. Then  Insarov  interposes,  and  tells 
him  quietly  that  if  he  takes  a  single  step  forward 
he  will  be  thrown  into  the  water.  The  lake  is 
close  to  him,  but  the  German  officer,  quite  incredu- 
lous, takes  the  forbidden  step,  and  the  next  instant 
he  is  splashing  in  the  lake.  Here  at  last  was 
an  argument  that  even  the  German  understood. 
When  he  was  eventually  dragged  out,  he  merely 
contented  himself  with  threatening  the  *'  Russian 
scoundrels  "  that  he  would  make  the  regulation 
complaints. 

But  the  incident  impressed  Elena.  Something 
had  been  done,  after  all  that  ineffectual  chatter  of 
Shubin.  An  idea  had  been  expressed  in  action 
instead  of  in  rhetoric. 

It  was  all  very  well  for  the  critics  to  gibe  at  the 
insignificance  of  the  incident.  To  the  young 
Russian  girl  it  was  symbolic  of  the  unknown — 
that  blow  that  so  many  were  preparing  to  strike, 


Turgenev  125 

that  blow  of  which  so  many  spoke,  that  blow 
which  to  many  appeared  already  muffled  and 
paralysed  by  the  rage  of  words  that  anticipated  it. 

Elena's  unconscious,  involuntary  choice  has 
now  become  fixed  and  definite.  This  is  the  man 
who  will  fashion  her  dreams  into  reality.  Secretly 
she  confesses  to  herself  this  strange  happiness 
that  has  burst  in  upon  her  life.  In  the  diary 
of  Elena  we  have  not  only  the  analysis  of  her 
individual  temperament,  but  also  a  yet  deeper 
analysis  of  those  other  w^ordless  heroines,  from 
Natalya  who  failed  to  rouse  Rudin,  to  Liza  whom 
fate  held  back  from  Lavretsky. 

In  English  fiction  the  diary  is  an  accepted 
banality,  one  more  device  for  avoiding  the  atmo- 
sphere of  real  things.  With  Turgenev  it  is  some- 
thing quite  different.  This  sensitive  and  secret 
confession  of  a  soul  to  itself  has  nothing  in  common 
with  the  "  Mes  Larmes  "  of  Thackeray's  derision. 
Elena  is  telling  things  to  herself,  shaping  in  words 
all  the  half-guessed-at  hopes  and  fears  that  are 
beginning  to  haunt  her  with  a  deeper  insistence 
than  the  long  vague  pity  of  her  girlhood.  That 
is  on  the  surface,  but  she  is  doing  more  than  this. 
Unconsciously  she  is  exploring  the  depths  of  the 
Russian  woman's  soul.  This  it  is  which  makes 
"  On  the  Eve  "  a  more  significant  and  permanent 
reading  of  Russian  character  than  either  "  Rudin  " 
or  "  Liza."  Elena  is  not  merely  a  young  girl 
babbling  the  sweet  secrets  of  her  youth  ;   she  is 


126  Two  Russian  Reformers 

a  Russian  woman  stammering  out  a  love  that  is 
inseparable  from  the  exaltation  of  sacrifice. 

Sometimes  at  the  Magny  dinners  the  Russian 
would  revert  to  his  countrywomen,  and  in  such 
moments  the  naturalism  of  Zola  and  the  rest 
became  remote  and  distant,  and  he  would  see  close 
to  him  the  silent,  clear-eyed  women  of  the  steppes, 
who  so  easily  detected  the  true  thing  amid  the 
mazes  and  labyrinths  of  words.  But  even  in  this 
concrete  confession  Elena  reverts  to  those  abstrac- 
tions which  are  never  very  far  from  the  Russian's 
heart.  What  is  the  meaning  of  her  youth  ? 
Why  has  a  soul  been  given  to  her  ?  What  is  the 
meaning  of  it  all  ?  Who  will  answer  these  ques- 
tions ?  The  girl  reviews  one  after  the  other  the 
men  who  offer  her  their  love.  Here  again  we  are 
conscious  of  something  altogether  beyond  the  mere 
diary  of  an  isolated  Russian  girl.  For,  in  this 
helpless  little  circle  of  admirers  there  are  many 
of  the  types  by  which  the  purpose  of  Russia  has 
been  so  long  confused.  There  is  Shubin,  the 
artist,  clear-sighted,  and  at  the  same  time  devoid 
of  inner  vision,  artistically  sensitive,  but  without 
the  penetration  that  is  bought  by  endurance, 
without  the  real  capacity  for  suffering,  even  the 
deeper  suffering  of  art  itself.  Instinctively  the 
girl  shuns  him,  and  distrusts  art  as  the  mere 
make-belief  of  life.  For  she  knows  well  that  he 
and  such  as  he  are  not  the  men  who  will  at 
last  strike  silently  and  to  the  death.     After  all, 


Turgenev  127 

women  at  their  very  best  are  themselves  works  of 
art,  and  they  involuntarily  distrust  themselves 
little  less  than  they  distrust  each  other.  But 
Shubin  is  by  no  means  a  mere  foil  to  the  man  of 
action.  Nor  is  he  made  to  fit  in  with  the  angles 
and  curves  of  other  people's  temperaments.  He 
does  not  strike  the  anticipated  attitude  or  utter 
the  expected  aphorism.  Volatile  and  capricious, 
he  preserves  not  only  the  artist's  power  for 
self-torment,  but  also  the  artist's  divination  of 
another's  pain.  But,  now  that  we  are  "  on  the 
eve,"  Shubin  and  such  as  he  must  stand  aside. 
Then  there  is  Bersenyev,  the  man  of  brotherly 
sympathy,  the  "  go-between  "  of  science  whom 
romance  has  half-caught  in  its  coils.  He,  too,  is 
powerless  in  the  world  of  action,  though,  with  that 
quixotic  sympathy  against  one's  own  interests 
which  is  so  thoroughly  Russian,  he  is  a  cordial 
helper  of  Elena  in  her  love  for  another  man.  But 
he,  too,  must  give  place  in  the  hour  of  emancipa- 
tion. 

For,  there  is  one  man  who  has  come  into  Elena's 
life  who  will  march  forward  even  if  he  has  to 
march  alone.  "I  am  a  Bulgarian,"  he  exclaims, 
**  and  I  have  no  need  of  a  Russian's  love."  But 
in  spite  of  his  self-dedication  to  the  cause  of 
liberty  that  other  equally  immortal  cause  springs 
up  swiftly  and  suddenly  in  his  heart.  He  loves 
this  Russian  girl  in  spite  of  himself,  and  he  is 
worthy  of  her.     It  is  as  though  Natalya  had  met  a 


128  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Rudin  who  was  strong,  and  as  though  Liza  had 
met  a  Lavretsky  who  was  free.  Devoted  to  the 
national  cause,  Insarov  desires  to  retain  his  per- 
sonal secret,  but  the  Russian  girl  reads  it  in  his 
eyes.  She  knows  that  her  lot  will  be  with  this 
man,  whose  only  hope  in  life  is  to  be  led  against 
desperate  odds  to  death.  She  knows  that  the 
old  luxury  and  protection  in  her  life  must  end. 
But  she  does  not  hesitate,  any  more  than  Natalya 
or  Liza  would  have  hesitated.  Like  flame  leaping 
to  meet  flame,  her  own  passion  for  sacrifice  irradi- 
ates this  wordless  courage  which  she  knows  to  be 
the  very  answer  to  her  long  inarticulate  yearnings. 
And  the  man  understands  the  delicate,  exquisite 
thing  that  has  come  into  the  barren  hardness  of 
his  life.  It  is  no  wonder  that  Turgenev,  with 
such  inner  dreams  as  these,  was  not  quite  whole- 
heartedly in  sympathy  with  some  of  these  Parisians 
who  labelled  a  dead  passion  much  as  a  naturalist 
labels  a  dead  moth. 

But  even  in  "  On  the  Eve  "  something  of  the 
old  doubt  hovers  on  the  very  threshold  of  action. 
Insarov  remembers  the  ancient  oppressions  and 
the  ancient  wrongs.  War  for  Bulgarian  freedom 
is  inevitable  ;  this  blow  at  least  is  no  chatterer's 
dream.  But,  foreigner  though  he  is,  Insarov  is 
too  certainly  a  creation  of  Turgenev  to  be  wholly 
convinced.  He,  too,  is  conscious  of  that  paralys- 
ing note  of  warning,  "  We  are  not  ready."  None 
the  less,  even  with  this  note  of  nitchevo  in  his 


Turgenev  129 

heart,  he  prepares  for  instant  action.  And  in 
this  moment  Elena  comes  to  him  bringing  with 
her  the  weakening  atmosphere  of  passion.  But 
not  for  a  moment  does  she  persuade  him  to  ex- 
change his  bayonet  for  her  arms.  She  does  not 
lure  him.  to  abandon  his  honour  for  the  sake  of 
her  love.  She  also  is  overwhelmingly  on  the  side 
of  action.  Let  him  go  at  once,  but  she  will  go 
with  him.  His  cause  has  become  hers ;  her 
marriage-settlement  shall  be  a  Turkish  bullet, 
and  her  dowry  the  after-thrust  of  a  Turkish 
bayonet.  She  is  willing  to  accept  both,  grateful 
to  be  allowed  to  go  upon  this  hard  honeymoon. 

And  Insarov,  musing  upon  this  young  girl's 
challenge  to  destiny,  wonders  if  he  has  been 
listening  only  in  a  dream.  For  surely  there  are 
in  the  world  no  such  women  as  she  who  but  now 
had  seemed  tenderly  to  whisper  to  him.  There 
are  not  women  who  are  to  be  wooed  with  these 
certainties  of  danger  and  hardship  instead  of  the 
promises  of  luxury  and  dominance.  There  are 
not  women  who  will  share  gladly  the  anonymous 
burden  of  revolt,  serving  with  no  hope  of  personal 
reward  the  losing  cause  of  freedom.  But  it  had 
been  no  dream  ;  the  Russian  girl  had  really  come 
to  him  whispering  the  promises  of  her  beauty 
and  her  youth.  In  that  poor  dark  room  of 
his  there  lingered  still,  fresh  and  perturbing  as 
the  near  memory  of  her  promise,  the  scent  of 
mignonette.     And  with  that  scent  there  return 


130  Two  Russian  Reformers 

to  him  a  thousand  haunting  memories,  beautiful 
and  stainless  even  as  this  courageous  passion 
which  has  illumined  and  ennobled  the  dusky 
hardships  of  his  life. 

In  other  novels  Turgenev  recalls  the  sharp 
tang  of  physical  sensation  associated  with  the 
perfumes  of  flowers.  And  as  one  reads  there 
arises  between  us  and  the  printed  page  a  nebula 
every  moment  taking  form  and  life.  One  catches 
the  faint  forgotten  swish  of  fantastic  skirts,  one 
hears,  as  in  some  long  low  empty  house,  the 
suggestion  of  muffled  laughter,  one  divines  a  sigh 
of  caressing  regret.  For  one  is  not  merely  reading 
a  book — one  is  in  the  presence  of  this  or  that 
heroine  of  Turgenev.  Not  only  for  him,  but  in 
a  sense  also  for  us,  the  remembered  perfume  has 
won  back,  as  from  the  dead,  the  half-forgotten 
woman.  Old  memories  crowd  in  upon  us  once 
more ;  old  burdens  are  renewed.  Old  graces 
return  with  a  deepened  glamour,  and  for  an  instant 
at  least  the  very  ashes  of  a  dead  transport  revive. 
But  nowhere  else,  even  in  the  novels  of  Turgenev, 
does  a  flower  recall  a  personality,  real  as  life  itself, 
more  insistently  than  the  spray  of  mignonette 
in  the  dark  miserable  room  where  Insarov  evokes 
the  presence  of  Elena. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  Bulgarian  tells  Elena 
that  the  Russians  have  hearts  of  pure  gold  ! 
Turgenev  maintained  that  the  Russian  people 
were  "  the  strangest,  the  most  astonishing  people 


Turgenev  131 

on  the  face  of  the  earth,"  and  if  he  has  made  one 
of  his  very  few  men  of  action  a  foreigner  instead 
of  a  Russian,  he  has  given  us  in  Elena  one  of  the 
simplest  and  noblest  creations  in  the  whole  world 
ol  literature.  Insarov  has  need  of  such  a  woman, 
for  now  at  the  eleventh  hour  he  is  struck  down 
by  illness.  While  he  is  stumbling  back  to  his 
bruised  life  she  comes  to  him  again.  He  feels 
her  breath  upon  his  cheek.  It  is  too  much  for 
him,  and  he  implores  her  to  leave  him ;  but  she 
refuses,  and  in  that  moment  the  girl  gives  herself 
to  the  man  who  loves  her  in  the  same  spirit  of 
exaltation  that  he  gives  himself  to  the  cause  of 
his  country's  freedom.  They  are  secretly  married, 
and  Bersenyev  does  all  in  his  power  to  help  them, 
so  that  they  form  a  trio  which  is  the  very  opposite 
of  the  menage  d  trois  so  necessary  to  French  fiction. 
That  is  Russian ;  and  essentially  Russian,  too,  is 
the  forgiveness  of  Elena's  father,  who  sheds  tears 
just  as  the  young  couple  are  driving  away  in  their 
sledge.  He  had  been  bitterly  opposed  to  this 
marriage,  but  now  that  the  shadow  of  war  and 
danger  is  so  close  to  them  he  cannot  harden  his 
heart  for  the  sake  of  his  pride. 

But  Elena  does  not  accompany  her  husband  to 
the  front.  After  all,  he  is  not  to  die  by  Turkish 
bullets,  but  of  illness  in  Venice.  He  is  a  stricken 
man,  and  over  this  sombre  honeymoon  there 
hovers  always  a  nearer  menace  than  that  of  the 
Turkish  troops.     But  they  have  their  bright  days. 


132  Two  Russian  Reformers 

and  on  one  of  them  they  listen  together  to  Verdi's 
La  Traviata.  A  plain,  unattractive-looking  girl 
with  a  feeble  voice  was  taking  the  part  of  Violetta, 
when  suddenly  she  "  found  herself  "  and  expressed 
as  by  some  strange  new  inspiration  her  own  in- 
dividual secret,  the  waste  of  youth. 

Elena  understood  that  sinister  waste.  For 
Turgenev  art  and  life  were  so  merged  each  in  each 
as  to  be  indivisible.  Hundreds  of  novelists  would 
have  made  a  pathetic  scene  of  this  dying  man 
watching  the  actress  pleading  for  youth.  For 
them  the  actress  herself  would  have  been  a  mere 
impersonal  accessory  with  no  background  of  her 
own,  a  mere  stage  property  of  romanticism.  But 
in  a  few  words  Turgenev  makes  her  a  living 
personality  from  whom  youth  is  being  torn  away. 
And  when  she  exclaims,  "  Lascia  mi  diviro — morir 
si  giovane,"  it  is  her  own  youth,  and  not  a  mere 
abstraction  for  which  she  is  pleading  with  a 
passion  that  has  suddenly  entered  the  world  of 
art.  It  is  for  her  own  youth  and  for  all  the 
youth  of  the  world,  for  this  stricken  Bulgarian, 
for  Elena  herself,  that  she  is  pleading. 

Elena  felt  cold,  cold  even  in  her  heart,  as  she 
heard  the  omen  of  "  Morir  si  giovane  "  spoken 
in  the  moment  of  hope.  For  even  now  Insarov 
expects  that  he  may  die  in  the  defence  of  his 
country.  From  the  other  side  of  the  Adriatic  a 
certain  Renditch  is  coming  to  accompany  him  to 
the  front.  Everything  is  in  progress.   The  Dalma- 


Turgenev  133 

tian  fishermen  have  given  up  their  very  dredging 
weights  to  make  bullets.  Renditch  is  coming  ! 
Insarov  murmurs  the  name  in  his  sleep.  They 
are  now  literally  on  the  eve  of  action ;  but  when 
Renditch  crosses  from  the  Slavonic  side  of  the 
Adriatic,  it  is  only  to  find  Insarov,  the  Bulgarian, 
dead. 

For  his  wife  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  now. 
But  she  will  bury  him  in  Slavonic  earth,  and  so 
she  leaves  with  his  corpse  for  Zara.  And  from 
that  moment  nothing  but  mystery  surrounds 
Elena.  Of  the  others  we  are  given  at  least  hints, 
but  of  Elena  we  know  only  that  while  she  pre- 
served life  she  would  be  faithful  to  the  dead. 
Only  somewhere  on  that  Dalmatian  coast,  or 
perhaps  in  The  Herzegovina,  there  may  have 
lingered  a  sombre  woman  whose  very  presence 
stole  like  a  faint  perfume  into  lives  that  swept 
carelessly  past  her  own.  In  that  atmosphere,  so 
impregnated  with  the  Latin  and  the  Slavonic 
genius,  Elena  may  have  continued,  however 
silently  and  unobtrusively,  the  splendid  tradition 
of  Russian  womanhood.  "  Morir  si  giovane " 
— that  had  been  after  all  the  motto  of  "On  the 
Eve."  It  was  left  to  this  Russian  girl  only  to 
cherish  a  memory  instead  of  inspiring  an  army, 
to  be  faithful  not  to  the  cause  of  an  oppressed 
nation  but  to  the  memory  of  a  dead  lover. 

No  note  of  hope  is  struck  in  this  novel.  Here 
we  have  not  even  the  might-have-been  of  regret. 


134  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Turgenev's  attitude  towards  the  illusion  of  national 
freedom  is  in  "  On  the  Eve  "  precisely  the  same  as 
in  all  his  other  books.     For  the  typical  Russian 
;    is  neither  Shubin  who  is  half  French,  nor  Elena's 
',    lover  who  is  a  Bulgarian,  but  Uvar  Ivanovitch 
\   Stahov,  the  inert,  wordless  man  whose  inertia  is 
almost  animal  in  its  monstrous  persistence.   There 
is  something  terrible  in  this  darkened  mind,  into 
which  stray  gleams  flash  only  to  die  away  leaving 
the    blackness    more    intense.     Shubin    with    his 
flippant   Western   glibness    addresses    him    as    a 
**  primeval  force,"  but  the  words  are  mere  sounds 
to  him.     Shubin  may  chatter,  and  even  suffer  a 
little  in  the  dreams  of  his  art.     Bersenyev  may 
pore  over  books  and  watch  and  suffer  as  he  sees 
happiness   floating   past   him   for   ever.     Insarov 
may  march  silently  to  his  death,  asking  only  to 
serve  with  his  body  the  eternally  elusive  cause 
of  freedom ;  but  Uvar  Ivanovitch  is  remote  and 
detached  from  every  one  of  them.     He  alone  can 
wait  as  the  Asiatic,  to  whom  time  is  meaningless, 
waits    through    the    centuries.     All    around    him 
hearts  may  be  throbbing  to  the  rhythm  of  broken 
lives  ;    high  hopes  may  fall,  and  love  itself  may 
""  break   beneath    the    straining    cords    of    destiny. 
But  he,  the  "  primeval  force,"  will  continue  to 
stare  past  them  into  nothingness.     And  yet  when 
Shubin,  the  little  fluttering  artist  of  the  ready 
tongue,  asked  him  if  there  would  ever  be  men 
among  them,  Uvar  answered  once  at  least  in  the 


U5 
W 

M 
H 
CO 

W 

X 
H 


H 
K 
O 

ft 


/-      K 


135 


Turgencv  137 

affirmative.  "  There  will  be,"  he  said.  But  when 
on  the  very  last  page  of  this  sombre  novel  the  same 
question  is  repeated,  the  Russian  of  all  the  Russians 
only  flourishes  his  fingers  and  stares  moodily  into 
the  remote  distance. 

"  On  the  Eve  "  appeared  in  1859,  ^w^^  years 
before  "  Fathers  and  Sons."  But  long  before 
either  of  these  novels  had  been  written  Turgenev 
had  come  intimately  close  to  the  real  Russian 
people.  In  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  "  the 
irony  of  that  suspicious  twin  self  remained  almost 
stingless,  so  far  at  least  as  the  moujiks  are  con- 
cerned. In  the  later  novels  more  bitter  views 
of  the  Russians  were  to  find  expression.  But 
scattered  through  every  one  of  them — through 
"Rudin,"  through  "Liza,"  through  "Fathers 
and  Sons  "  and  "  On  the  Eve  " — are  unqualified 
tributes  to  the  Russian  people  written  in  the  same 
spirit  that  pervades  that  series  of  exquisite  pictures 
of  life  whose  genius  flashed  the  message  of  liberty 
into  millions  of  stricken  lives. 

Long  before  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  " 
Gogol  had  travelled  through  the  heart  of  Russia, 
determined  to  show  the  world  what  manner  of 
people  these  Russians  were.  He  sees  things  with 
his  own  fresh  eyes,  and  writes  them  down  with 
that  almost  passionate  truthfulness  of  vision 
which  is  such  an  incongruous  accompaniment  of 
the  Russian  inheritance  of  pity.  Other  nations 
have  produced  defenders  of  the  unfortunate,  but 

9 


138  Two  Russian  Reformers 

they  do  not  defend  them  in  the  spirit  in  which 
the  Russian  defends  them.  Victor  Hugo,  for 
example,  hurls  into  the  role  of  the  helpless  an 
almost  epic  largeness  of  destiny.  By  having 
nothing  in  the  world,  the  unfortunate  one  becomes 
a  Titan  towering,  as  it  were,  upon  the  very  pedestal 
of  misfortune.  In  short,  the  Frenchman  pleads 
his  cause  by  dragging  him  into  the  familiar  circle 
of  heroes.  But  for  the  Russian,  and  particularly 
for  Gogol,  heroes  in  our  Western  sense  do  not 
exist  at  all.  Above  and  below  alike,  fioggers  and 
flogged,  these  fellows  are  scamps  and  rascals 
seemingly  deserving  only  of  contempt.  Only 
Gogol  himself  does  not  regard  them  in  that  light ; 
for  him  they  are  fellow  human  beings.  For,  in 
his  heart,  as  in  the  heart  of  every  Russian,  there 
vibrates  naturally  and  inevitably  the  splendid,  un- 
taught challenge  of  Terence — "  Homo  sum,  humani 
nihil  a  me  alienum  puto."  But  this  man,  this 
barbarian  ''  with  the  lizard's  eyes,"  must  see 
them  as  they  actually  are.  They  must  not  be 
posed  for  a  sentimental  photograph.  In  his  own 
sinister  epigram,  "  If  your  nose  is  crooked,  you 
must  not  blame  the  mirror." 

Turgenev  also  was  a  Russian  realist,  and  was 
constitutionally  incapable  of  that  make-belief  of 
life  which  is  the  dowry  of  so  many  Anglo-Saxons, 
but  he  entered  neither  the  Russian  country 
house  nor  the  Russian  isba  in  quite  the  same 
spirit  as  Nicolai  Gogol.      It  was  not  at  all  his 


Turgenev  i39 

mission  to  discover  everything  that  was  wrong  in 
Russia  and  to  write  it  down.  He  had  no  mission 
of  any  kind  whatever,  less  even  than  Gogol  him- 
self. But  he  translated  in  the  pages  of  "The 
Annals  of  a  Sportsman  "  some  at  least  of  those 
clustering  memories  that  would  renew  themselves 
in  the  garden  of  his  childhood.  And  the  pity  of 
his  youth  for  his  mother's  slaves  stabbed  its 
way  through  all  the  faint  sweetness  of  summer 
memories  into  an  insistent  appeal.  So  intimately 
personal  were  these  memories,  so  interwoven 
were  they  with  all  his  early  aspirations,  that 
Turgenev  was  never  satisfied  with  the  book. 
There  were,  perhaps,  too  many  of  these  Russian 
memories  to  crowd  into  any  single  book,  and 
there  must  have  been  many  and  many  a  page  of 
his  Russian  life  that  was  left  undisturbed  with 
so  many  other  dreams  in  that  dim  old  garden. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  book  was  not  written 
in  Russia,  as  is  so  generally  believed.  "  Now," 
writes  Turgenev  in  the  course  of  a  letter,  "  let  us 
pass  to  your  little  old  woman,  that  is  to  say  to  the 
public  or  to  the  critics.  Like  every  old  woman, 
they  cling  obstinately  to  vulgar  or  preconceived 
opinions,  on  however  slight  a  basis  they  may  rest. 
For  example,  they  always  maintain  that  after 
my  *  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  '  all  my  works  are 
bad,  thanks  to  my  absence  from  Russia,  of  which, 
if  one  is  to  believe  them,  I  can  have  no  knowledge 
whatsoever  ;    but  this  reproach  can  only  refer  to 


140  Two  Russian  Reformers 

what  I  have  written  after  1863.  Up  to  that  date, 
that  is  to  say  up  to  my  forty-fifth  year,  I  remained 
in  Russia  almost  without  stirring  from  it,  except 
from  1848  to  1850,  during  which  period  I  wrote 
precisely  *  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman,'  while 
'  Rudin,'  '  Liza  '  and  '  Fathers  and  Sons  '  were 
written  in  Russia."  The  old  quarrel  between  the 
great  writer  and  the  small  critics  would  be  faded 
and  meaningless  now,  but  for  the  fact  that  even 
to  this  day  Turgenev  is  so  often  judged  not  so 
much  by  what  he  accomplished  as  a  v/riter  as 
by  what  he  failed  to  accomplish  as  a  reformer. 
But  even  from  this  most  injudicious  standpoint 
it  is  perhaps  weU  that  this  book,  which  really  did 
accomplish  a  great  reform,  was  written  out  of 
his  native  country.  For  it  was  abroad  rather 
than  at  home,  in  moments  of  mournful  nostalgia, 
that  the  Russian  land  became  an  open  book  to 
Ivan  Turgenev.  In  Russia  he  would  be  haunted 
ceaselessly,  as  he  so  often  admits,  by  that  life 
of  the  boulevards  which  appealed  to  one  side 
of  each  of  those  twin  selves.  But  when  he  was 
abroad  it  would  appear  to  him  that  only  in  those 
sombre  steppes,  in  those  desolate  flat  stretches 
that  seemed  to  be  forgotten  by  time  itself,  could 
he  find  peace  for  his  soul.  And  though  the  first 
wonder  of  passing  through  an  utterly  unexplored 
land  which  comes  to  one  on  opening  "  Dead  Souls  " 
was  never  to  be  repeated,  Turgenev,  in  these 
sketches   of   Russian   country-life,   has   given   us 


Turgcnev  141 

something  equally  individual  and  distinct  from 
anything  that  had  gone  before  or  that  has  come 
after  him. 

In  some  half-dozen  books  the  malice  of  the 
suspicious  Turgenev  was  given  free  play.  In 
"  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  "  it  is  quite  other- 
wise. It  is  the  calm,  peaceful  and  limpid  intelli- 
gence that  absorbs  these  rural  scenes,  every  one 
of  which  vibrates  with  a  depth  of  emotion  of 
which  the  exploiters  of  pathos  know  nothing. 
He  is  not  pleading  a  case  in  these  pages,  he  is 
writing  down  little  glimpses  of  a  handful  of  lives 
by  which  millions  may  be  judged.  And  every- 
where the  scents  and  sounds,  the  very  languor 
of  summer,  steal  upon  our  senses,  as  though  the 
writer  were  exhaling  from  his  very  soul  the 
drowsy  inchoate  freshness  of  long  Russian  days. 

Over  and  over  again,  too,  in  dealing  with  these 
elemental  people,  he  produces  a  most  difficult 
illusion — that  of  at  one  and  the  same  time  hushing 
things  up  and  "letting  the  cat  out  of  the  bag." 
There  is  no  pathos  either  in  the  Victor  Hugo  or  in 
the  Dickens  sense  in  these  annals  of  lives  "  under 
the  water."  Nor  is  there  the  hard  smile  of  de 
Maupassant  when  he  has  carved  from  the  sad 
jumble  of  humanity  one  of  his  sinister  "  slices  of 
life."  Perhaps,  indeed,  there  is  no  parallel — not 
even  in  Gogol's  famous  book — with  these  quiet 
sketches  which  disclose  such  a  multitude  of 
suffering  lives.     In  this  atmosphere  the  anony- 


142  Two  Russian  Reformers 

mous  "  souls  "  of  Madame  Turgencv  take  upon 
themselves  the  forms  of  men.  The  disobedient 
servants,  people  like  Nicolas  Jakovlef,  Ivan  Petrof 
and  Egor  Kondratief  appear  as  householders 
almost  owning  their  lives,  real  human  beings  with 
their  own  point  of  view,  sorrfetimes  even  slyly 
judging  their  masters.  Here  is  the  real  revelation 
of  the  apparently  unrevealable.  Its  author's  pen 
seems  to  have  been  dipped  in  memory  itself. 
Jakovlef  and  the  rest  of  them  had  their  own 
thoughts  and  dreams  if  one  had  only  known, 
and  here  suddenly  by  some  odd  magic  of  a 
wandering  sportsman  they  have  leaped  into 
immortality.  Some  one  has  seen  these  people, 
has  really  looked  at  them  with  seeing  eyes  and 
has  written  down  their  secrets  of  which  they 
themselves  were  but  dimly  conscious.  Long  after- 
wards at  one  of  those  brilliant  Parisian  dinners 
he  was  to  explain  this  amazing  "  method " 
with  which  Zola's  well-filled  note-books  could 
never  compete.  It  is  with  this  "  method,"  which 
has  its  beginning  and  its  end  in  seeing  things  where 
others  can  only  peer  at  them,  that  he  introduces 
us  to  a  moujik  named  Hor.  With  his  high  fore- 
head, his  snub  nose  and  his  small  eyes,  this  "  soul  " 
recalls  the  personality  of  Socrates.  None  the 
less  at  any  moment  he  may  be  flogged  at  his 
master's  whim  if  ever  the  black  mood  should 
seize  him.  But  Hor  is  no  pessimist.  Asked 
why  he  does  not  buy  his  freedom,  he  shakes  his 


Turgenev  143 

head.  WHiy  should  he  do  that  ?  He  has  a  good 
master.  Things  are  as  they  are,  and  this  Russian 
Socrates  is  quite  able  to  profit  by  them.  Through 
talking  with  this  man  Turgenev  realised  for  the 
first  time  "  the  simple,  wise  discourse  of  the 
Russian  moujik  "  which  Tolstoy  was  afterwards 
to  accept  as  the  last  word  of  human  wisdom. 

In  the  simple,  by  no  means  lachrymose  chatter 
of  peasants,  the  good  old  times  come  back  to  us. 
A  moujik,  for  example,  tells  of  his  old  master, 
who  **  was  all  a  master  should  be,"  and  "  who 
would  have  given  you  an  odd  blow,  but  would 
have  forgotten  it  by  the  time  that  you  looked 
round."  There  was  one  thing  against  him,  how- 
ever :  he  kept  mistresses,  and  these  women  were 
difficult  to  the  peasants,  whose  lives  they  were 
allowed  to  play  with  as  so  many  easily-replaced 
toys.  Madame  Turgenev  herself  had  been  con- 
siderate and  compassionate  compared  with  these 
women.  One  of  them,  Akulina  by  name,  had  a 
young  Russian  sent  out  to  be  a  soldier  because 
he  had  spilt  some  chocolate  on  her  new  dress. 
"  And  he  was  not  the  only  one  she  served  so  ! 
Ah  well,  these  were  good  times,  though."  With 
such  illuminating  details  of  despotism  Turgenev 
lights  up  frequently  not  merely  the  page  of  a  book, 
but  the  life  of  a  human  being.  Turgenev,  who 
remembered  Poliakoff  and  Agatha  and  so  many 
others,  understood  the  serf's  standpoint.  Re- 
peatedly one  seems  to  hear  in   "  The  Annals  of 


144  Two  Russian  Reformers 

a  Sportsman  "  the  echo  of  Agatha's  verdict  on 
the  old  school  :  "  Yes,  I  have  suffered  a  great 
deal  from  the  late  Madame  Turgenev;  but  none 
the  less,  I  was  very  fond  of  her.  She  was  a 
real  mistress."  Turgenev,  writing  in  the  last 
years  of  his  mother's  life,  had  no  need  to  invent 
the  misfortunes  of  the  serfs.  But  this  same 
master  who  can  illuminate  by  the  mention  of  a 
few  odd  details,  who  all  his  life  protested  against 
the  accentuation  of  the  insignificant,  occasionally 
represents  an  interior  with  the  minute  fidelity 
of  a  Meissonier.  In  "  The  District  Doctor  "  the 
hero  reproduces  the  scene  in  the  sick-room  just 
as  he  might  have  reproduced  it  in  an  official 
report.  That  is  what  actually  took  place,  and  so 
the  good  doctor  tells  it  as  a  matter  of  course,  and 
with  no  apology  for  its  humdrum  exactitude. 
But  afterwards  something  extraordinary  happens, 
and  he  tells  that  also  just  as  it  occurred,  without 
affectation  and  without  the  self-indulgence  of 
commonplace  pity. 

"  Morir  si  giovane  :  "  others  besides  patriots  can 
experience  the  pain  of  that,  and  the  country 
doctor's  patient  was  experiencing  it  as  she  lay 
tossing  about  on  her  tormented  death-bed.  She 
is  going  to  die,  and  she  has  never  experienced  that 
love  which  is  the  knowledge  of  life.  Suddenly 
she  throws  her  arms  around  the  doctor  and  kisses 
him.  She  is  grasping  at  love  even  in  the  very 
clutch  of  death.     The  doctor  understands.     For 


Turgenev  i45 

this  girl,  he  is  not  so  much  an  individual  as  the 
poor  symbol  of  all  romance  from  which  Death 
is  dragging  her  away.  He  understands  why 
she  hated  to  die  before  love  had  quickened  her 
languid  pulse.  She  dies  the  next  day,  and  he 
keeps  her  ring.  She  dies,  that  is  all  about  it, 
and  he  goes  on  to  talk  of  quite  other  things — of 
the  merchant's  daughter  whom  he  married  after- 
wards, and  of  her  dowry  of  seven  thousand  roubles. 
Then  he  sits  down  to  a  game  of  "  Preference  " 
for  halfpenny  points,  and  after  winning  two 
roubles  and  a  half  goes  home  perfectly  satisfied 
with  his  evening.  That  is  the  Russian  touch. 
Neither  declamation  on  the  one  hand  nor  exclama- 
tion on  the  other  is  permitted  to  jar  upon  the 
sombre  naivete  of  reality.  After  all,  life  is  like 
that.  One  watches  death  and  one  remembers 
passion,  but  one  also  plays  "  Preference "  for 
halfpenny  points,  and  if  one  is  a  Russian  country 
doctor,  one  is  undisguisedly  glad  to  win  two  roubles 
and  a  half. 

In  "  The  Peasant  Proprietor  Ovsyanikov  "  the 
novelist  introduces  us  to  a  novus  homo,  who  is  a 
mediator  between  the  peasants  and  their  owners. 
He,  too,  recalls  the  good  old  times,  and  tells  how 
his  father  was  flogged  while  his  master  looked  on 
from  a  balcony.  And  the  lady  of  the  house  her- 
self was  not  too  squeamish  to  witness  the  outrage 
from  one  of  the  windows.  His  offence  was  that 
he  had  claimed  a  piece   of  land ;   but  eventually 


146  Two  Russian  Reformers 

a  promise  was  wrung  from  him  to  abandon  his 
claim,  after  which  he  was  dismissed  with  the 
warning  that  he  should  be  grateful  for  escaping 
alive.  The  piece  of  land  in  question  was  aptly 
enough  called  by  the  peasants  "  the  Cudgelled 
Land."  Such  were  the  good  old  times,  and  as  for 
the  last  dwindling  days  of  serfdom,  the  general 
verdict  of  this  book  is  very  much  the  same  as  that 
,-'of  all  the  others  :  "  The  Old  is  dead,  but  the  Young 
is  not  born." 

Every  now  and  then  one  finds  the  new  spirit 
intruding  upon  the  old,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  the 
endurance  and  patience  of  the  peasant  rather 
than  his  resentment  and  revolt  that  are  con- 
spicuous. A  master  punishes  his  servant  ;  the 
sense  of  injustice  dies  out  with  the  sensation  of 
actual  physical  pain.  After  all,  life  is  like  that, 
and  has  been  always  like  that.  It  is  only  the 
Old  Russia,  muses  Turgenev,  who  through  this 
very  book  was  to  grope  his  way  towards  the  New. 

But  in  Old  and  New  Russia  alike,  Nature  is 
unendingly  the  same.  Day  after  day  the  lazy 
hours  repeat  themselves  ;  and  again  and  again,  with 
that  art  which  lends  genius  to  monotony,  Tur- 
genev translates  the  sensations  of  summer,  the 
shade  of  birch  woods,  the  cool  of  low  river  banks, 
the  slow  drowsy  silences,  the  humming,  buzzing 
under-life,  the  inexplicable  sounds  of  night.  In 
"  Byezhin  Prairie  "  in  particular,  he  runs  almost 
the  whole  gamut  of  summer  sounds  floating  over 


Turgenev  147 

vast  mountainless  distances.  One  can  see  the 
group  of  boys  round  their  supper  on  the  open 
steppes  listening,  now  interested,  now  half  startled 
by  the  mystery  that  prowls  so  close  to  them, 
that  menacing  mystery  of  nature  which  for 
Turgenev  is  so  intimately  interwoven  with  the  life- 
threads  of  destiny.  But  no  matter  what  strange 
fragment  of  folk  lore  steals  into  any  one  of  these 
sketches,  the  art  of  Turgenev  never  descends  to 
the  level  of  the  intentional  "  thrill."  It  is  always' 
with  actual  life  that  he  is  preoccupied,  and  it  is  by  ^ 
reason  of  this  preoccupation  with  the  deep  under- 
currents of  reality  that  he,  in  the  bare  confines  of  f 
a  miserable  Russian  isha,  is  none  the  less  able  i 
to  reveal  the  cruel  pressure  of  the  whole  world 
movement.  You  are  talking  with  a  group  of 
peasants,  let  us  say,  and  they  are  repeating  time- 
worn  stories.  They  are  real  characters  strongly 
differentiated,  and  not  in  the  least  idealised 
products  of  the  steppes,  but  none  the  less  you  are 
learning  from  them  the  secrets  of  the  human  race. 
Apparently  you  are  on  the  most  commonplace 
terms  with  the  lowliest  of  human  beings,  but  you 
are  at  the  same  time  in  the  closest  touch  with  the 
pervading  forces  of  human  destiny. 

Very  seldom,  indeed,  does  Turgenev  express 
his  sympathy  with  the  Russian  peasant  in  terms 
of  set  praise  ;  for  him  the  moujik  is  neither  a 
newly  discovered  philosopher  nor  the  innovator 
of  a  new  wisdom.     One  definite  tribute,  however. 


148  Two  Russian  Reformers 

he  pays  to  him  in  the  recognition  of  the  tranquil 
courage  with  which  at  all  times  he  confronts 
death — a  courage  which  cannot  be  attributed 
either  to  "  indifference  "  or  to  "  stolidity."  One 
after  the  other  they  are  led  before  us  in  unpre- 
tentious procession,  these  simple  people  for  whom 
death  is  the  last  unquestioned  ceremony.  The 
Russian  dies  as  he  lives,  without  making  any  fuss 
about  it.  It  is  all  part  and  parcel  of  this  ignored 
peasant-life,  too  ordinary  a  matter  for  tears  or 
pathetic  comment.  Heroism  of  the  accepted  kind 
casts  no  halo  upon  this  unflinching  last  hour  of 
the  moujik's  bitter  comedy.  But  in  the  terrible 
tranquillity  with  which  he  accepts  death,  as  he 
accepts  every  other  blow  of  fate,  there  is  written 
the  final  word  of  the  endurance  of  generations  of 
human  lives. 

At  another  time  Turgenev  shows  us  the  almost 
hypnotic  influence  of  music  upon  these  children  of 
the  steppes.  There  is  a  singing  competition  in 
a  booth  for  a  bet,  and  the  peasants  are  drinking 
heavily.  Suddenly  all  these  tavern  loungers, 
aroused  from  their  coma  by  a  singer's  voice,  have 
become  men  with  the  winding  memories  of  men. 
The  very  genius  of  their  own  steppes  unfolds  itself 
to  them,  speaks  to  them  from  beyond  great 
distances.  And  the  voice  rises  and  falls  to  the 
rhythm  of  a  strange  emotion  before  which  all  are 
hushed  but  which  all  divine.  At  the  end,  when 
it  is  all  over,  they  are  drinking  again  and  hob- 


Turgenev  149 

nobbing  on  the  old  tavern  level,  but  one  realises 
that  at  any  moment  these  Russian  moujiks  may 
be  lured  away  from  their  ignoble  outer  lives  by  the 
inner  appeal  of  some  new  haunting  voice. 

But  whatever  their  possibilities  may  be,  these 
people,  men,  women,  and  children,  may  be  bought 
and  sold.  In  "  Piotr  Petrovitch  Karataev  "  the 
novelist  sketches,  with  one  knows  not  what  stings 
of  personal  reminiscence,  the  actual  bargaining 
for  the  possession  of  a  serf  girl.  Her  rich  mistress 
refuses  to  sell  her,  and  so  the  would-be  purchaser 
carries  her  off.  In  the  end,  however,  she  is  dis- 
covered, and  gives  herself  up  to  her  former  owner 
as  though  she  were  some  sentient  piece  of  stolen 
property. 

And  yet  these  people  are  sensitive  and  able  to 
appreciate  the  essential  liberty  of  love.  In  "  The 
Tryst"  Turgenev  sketches  one  such  peasant  girl 
of  the  Old  Russia  whose  pretty  face  is  filled  with 
the  sombre  wonder  of  love.  She  has  come  to 
meet  the  peasant  of  the  New  Russia,  a  manikin 
of  mannerisms  and  attitudes  for  whose  slightest 
glance  she  is  foolishly  thankful.  But  Viktor  is 
tired  of  her.  He  is  going  back  to  Petersburg,  and 
her  little  romance  is  dead.  Turgenev  has  lavished 
quite  exceptional  minuteness  upon  this  slight 
picture  of  a  valet  forsaking  a  serf  girl.  One  sees 
not  only  his  expression  reflecting  his  small  emo- 
tions, but  even  his  efforts  at  quite  other  expres- 
sions.    All  his  little  valet  soul  seems  to  ooze  out 


150  Two  Russian  Reformers 

through  his  master's  clothes  as  he  dominates  this 
serf  girl  of  the  old  times  who  cannot  understand 
the  new  ways.  Afterwards  she  would  marry  at 
the  bidding  of  her  parents,  but  always  she  would 
suffer  as  dumb  things  suffer,  without  explanation, 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

Easily,  as  with  the  touch  of  a  veritable  magician, 
Turgenev  lets  fall,  as  though  merely  in  passing,  as 
though  they  were  of  no  significance  whatever,  the 
secrets  of  such  maimed  lives.  In  "  The  Hamlet 
of  the  Shtchigri  District  "  a  man  cannot  sleep  at 
night,  and  because  of  this  insomnia  he  chatters 
out  the  secret  of  his  life.  He  had  married  a  young 
girl  in  the  country,  and  even  now  that  she  is  dead 
he  is  not  sure  as  to  whether  he  really  ever  loved 
her  or  not.  For  always,  from  the  very  beginning 
of  their  marriage,  there  had  been  an  impenetrable 
veil  between  them  which  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  could  brush  aside.  There  was  a  "  secret 
wound  "  in  her  life  at  whose  origin  neither  of  them 
could  guess,  only  both  knew  that  it  was  always 
there.  Yet,  as  though  unconsciously,  the  sufferer 
hints  that  the  cause  of  this  life-wound  might  have 
been  simply  "  living  too  long  in  the  country." 
The  sadness  may  have  been  what  was  really  con- 
suming her — the  sadness  that  rises  like  a  heat- 
mist  from  the  steppes,  the  sadness  of  too  long 
patience,  the  inability  to  cope  with  one's  happi- 
ness when  one  has  been  too  long  broken  to  the 
habit  of  endurance.     There  had  been  in  her  life 


Turgenev  151 

no  commonplace  explanation  of  this  permeating 
melancholy  which  follows  so  close  upon  the  reckless 
exuberance  of  the  Slav.  She  did  not  pine  because 
she  was  love-sick  for  an  old  memory.  The  light 
was  not  fading  day  by  day  from  her  eyes  because 
they  were  becoming  blinded  by  "les  neiges  d'an- 
tan."  She  pined  like  a  bird  without  conscious 
regret,  and  in  the  very  moment  of  death  her 
eyes  retained  the  "  dumb  look  "  by  which  her 
whole  life  had  been  shadowed. 

It  is  this  "  dumb  look  "  that  is  symbolic  of 
Russian  life  as  Turgenev  presents  it  to  us  in  this 
book.  It  is  this  "  dumb  look  "  that  unites  this 
wife  of  a  Russian  landowner  to  the  voiceless 
multitude  of  serfs.  Nowhere  more  than  in  this 
story  do  we  get  the  sensation  of  the  stifling  op- 
pression of  Russian  life  which  Turgenev  was  so 
frequently  to  experience  on  his  visits  to  his  own 
country.  The  gipsy  girl,  Masha,  who  deserted  the 
hero  of  another  story,  tries  to  express  the  over- 
whelming sameness  of  the  steppes,  against  which 
her  whole  body  rebels.  She  tells  her  lover  that 
"weariness,  the  divider"  has  come  to  her,  and  so 
she  must  go.  At  any  cost  she  must  wander  away, 
as  though  to  escape  from  herself.  Turgenev  knew 
well  this  wandering  spirit,  which  was  to  give  Rudin 
no  rest  except  the  barricades  of  Paris. 

Almost  the  only  direct  plea  for  the  peasants  is 
put  into  the  mouth  of  the  heroine  of  "  A  Living 
Relic."     Lukerya    had    been    a    servant    in    the 


152  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Sportsman's  household  when  he  was  a  boy.     He 
remembers  her  as  a  "tall,  plump,  pink-and-white, 
singing,  laughing,  dancing  creature,"  and  now  her 
face  has  become  "  strained  and  dreadful  "  through 
illness  and  suffering.     Close  as  she  is  to  death,  this 
poor  girl  desires  nothing  for  herself,  but  she  requests 
the  son  of  her  old  mistress  to  plead  for  the  peasants, 
asking  him  if  his  mother  "  could  take  the  least 
bit  off  their  rent."     One  remembers  how  uselessly 
Turgenev  himself  had  pleaded  to  his  mother  on 
behalf  of  those  human  chattels  whom,  through  this 
very  book,  he  was  so  soon  to  liberate.     That  is 
one  of  the  very  few  direct  appeals  in  this  book  of 
memories  whose  pictures  are  etched  in  with  the 
very  salt  of  tears.     But  indirectly  there  are  such 
pleas  on  behalf  of  these  starved  and  desolate  lives 
which  none  who  reads  can  ever  forget.     And  the 
"method"  is  at  ah  times  devoid  of  generalities, 
and  without  the  suspicion  of  any  special  pleading. 
Turgenev  writes  as  one  who  has  no  cause  to  plead, 
but    only    reality    to    reveal.     But    the    details, 
observantly   noted,    sometimes    almost    hstlessly 
jotted  down,  as  though  the  novelist  had  become 
too  absorbed  in  the  depths  of  this  vast  hushed  life 
to  be  capable  of  any  criticism — these  cumulative 
details  strike  at  one's  heart  with  a  force  which  no 
arrangement  of  pathos  could  possibly  engender. 
The  great  artist  knows  that  it  is  the  significance 
of  the  ordinary  rather  than  the  eccentricity  of  the 
exception  which  has  value  in  the  revelation  of  life. 


Turgenev  i53 

Here,  too,  he  gratifies  his  whimsical  wish  that 
even  Nature  should  not  impose  upon  him  by 
any  remote  and  detached  grandeur.  The  scenes 
through  which  he  wanders  are  simple  and  homely 
landscapes,  great  fields  of  rye,  birchwoods,  grassy 
stretches  of  meadows  fringed  with  lakes  and 
rivulets.  Farm-yards  with  no  great  signs  of 
prosperity  about  them  abound,  and  the  ordinary 
domestic  life  of  the  moujik  unrolls  itself,  so  to 
speak,  as  naturally  as  that  of  any  bird  or  beast 
or  insect  in  this  slumbering  land. 

And  Turgenev  is  at  peace  with  these  long 
stretches  of  plain,  whose  very  melancholy  has  in 
it  a  certain  charm  of  solace.  People  and  soil  are 
inextricably  blended  in  this  book,  which  in  its 
deep  unconscious  sympathy,  in  its  slow  closeness 
to  the  moujik  and  his  environment  regarded  as 
one,  sometimes  passes  even  the  range  of  Gogol's 
extraordinary  insight.  Without  irony,  without 
bitterness,  almost  without  suspicion,  Turgenev  has 
given  us  in  the  pages  of  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sports- 
man "  a  series  of  pictures,  minute,  objective, 
which  reveal  the  external  life  of  the  Russian 
people  with  greater  detail  than  perhaps  any  other 
Russian  novelist,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Count  Tolstoy.  In  other  books,  notably  in  "  The 
Diary  of  a  Superfluous  Man,"  Turgenev  has 
analysed  the  vie  interieure  of  the  Slav  more  pro- 
foundly, but  it  is  by  no  means  strange  that  con- 
temporary criticism  should  have  claimed  that  in 

10 


154  Two  Russian  Reformers 

this  book  pre-eminently  Turgenev  showed  himself 
to  possess  a  real  knowledge  of  Russia  and  the 
Russian   people. 

Perhaps  in  no  other  book  is  the  realism  of 
Turgenev  more  clearly  exemplified  than  in  these 
sketches ;  nowhere  certainty  is  the  difference 
between  Russian  and  French  or  English  realism 
more  accentuated.  French  realism  is  only  too 
often  a  snarling  gibe  at  the  very  roots  of  human 
nature,  while  English  realism  is  frequently  a  self- 
conscious  affront  to  English  make-belief.  Neither 
the  one  nor  the  other  could  have  produced  these 
restrained  and  minutely  beautiful  pictures  of 
crushed  humanity.  There  are  here  neither  the 
brazen  brutalities  of  French  perverseness  nor  the 
more  inept  aggressions  of  the  outragers  of  Eng- 
lish taste.  For  Turgenev,  as  for  his  compatriots, 
realism  is  not  so  much  a  method  of  presentation 
as  the  very  oxygen  of  artistic  life.  Its  language 
is  not  merely  the  selected  medium  of  expression, 
but  rather  the  mother-tongue  of  art.  The  great 
Russian  realists  have  always  aimed  at  writing 
life  down  as  it  seemed  to  be  passing  before  their 
own  vision.  With  them  the  "  lacrimse  rerum  " 
have  not  been  sought  in  remotely  poignant  situa- 
tions, but  in  the  routine  life  of  suffering  and 
endurance.  Essentially  the  democrats  of  art, 
they  have  deliberately  ignored  the  proud  mono- 
logues of  heroes,  and  have  turned  their  attention 
to  the  almost  humdrum  pressure  of  ordinary  life 


Turgenev  i55 

upon  quite  ordinary  anonymous  units.  Above 
all,  they  and  they  alone  may  be  said  to  have  pre- 
ferred the  humble  to  the  arrogant  virtues  and  to 
have  dethroned  honour  in  favour  of  pity. 

Turgenev  in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman  " 
illustrates  objectively  the  want  of  crystallisation  {^, 
in  the  Russian  character  to  which  long  afterwards 
he  was  to  refer  in  Paris.  He  has  given  in  this 
book  the  external  lives  of  the  moujiks,  with  here 
and  there  a  glimpse  of  their  inner  dreams.  He  was 
afterwards  to  go  deeper,  but  so  far  as  the  Russian 
people  are  concerned,  had  this  been  his  only  book, 
Turgenev  would  have  made  good  his  claim  that 
his  compatriots  were,  in  spite  of  the  autocracy 
of  the  Russian  Government,  the  real  representa- 
tives of  humanity.  Turgenev  understood  the 
Russian  temperament  because  it  was  his  own,  and 
he  experienced,  perhaps  little  less  than  his  enemy 
Dostoievsky,  that  peculiar  Russian  pity,  which 
sees  in  the  criminal  the  victim  rather  than  the 
enemy  of  society. 

But  this  book  is  important  for  quite  another 
reason.  Art  and  life  with  Turgenev  were  always 
intimately  interwoven,  so  that  his  "  method " 
evaded  all  verbal  analysis.  One  day,  according 
to  Zola,  Flaubert  was  explaining  why  Prosper 
Merimee's  style  seemed  to  him  to  be  bad.  Tur- 
genev, who  was  present,  simply  could  not  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  such  a  discussion.  "  I  go 
to  Oka,"  he  exclaimed.     "  I  find  his  house — that 


156  Two  Russian  Reformers 

is  to  say,  not  a  house,  a  hut.  I  see  a  man  in  a 
blue  jacket,  patched,  torn,  with  his  back  turned 
to  me,  digging  cabbages.  I  go  up  to  him  and  say, 
*  Are  you  such  an  one  ? '  He  turns,  and  I  swear  to 
you  that  in  all  my  life  I  never  saw  such  piercing 
eyes.  Besides  them,  a  face  no  bigger  than  a 
man's  fist,  a  goat's  beard,  not  a  tooth.  He  was  a 
very  old  man."  Turgenev  entered  isba  after  isba, 
and  examined  each  with  the  same  blazing  scrutiny 
of  vision.  In  every  one  of  these  sketches  there 
is  no  "  method  "  at  all  but  that — to  see  and  to 
write  it  down  with  all  the  freshness  of  sudden 
pity.  Turgenev  had  no  need  of  Zola's  note- 
book. Such  scenes  as  these  were  part  of  his 
very  life,  and  it  is  through  them  that  his  whole 
youth  had  been  permeated  with  the  desire  to 
bring  liberty  to  the  Russian  peasants.  "  The 
Annals  of  a  Sportsman,"  indeed,  is  in  a  sense  as 
close  to  the  autobiography  of  Ivan  Turgenev  as 
either  "First  Love"  or  "Torrents  of  Spring." 


CHAPTER    V 

THE  author  of  "The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman," 
cosmopoUtan  though  he  became,  never 
broke  the  spell  of  Russian  influence.  Year 
after  year  he  deserted  Paris  in  order  to  revisit  his 
old  home  at  Spasskoe.  At  each  visit  he  found  it 
more  and  more  dilapidated,  and  at  last,  in  1880, 
he  was  forced  to  repair  it  on  quite  a  grand  scale. 
On  these  visits  his  old  friends  renew  relations  with 
him,  and  Turgenev  surprises  them  by  insisting 
upon  strictly  European  methods  of  living.  He 
has  remained,  however,  a  true  Slav  in  his  neglect 
of  dates,  and  the  arrival  of  invited  guests  is  now, 
as  always,  something  of  a  surprise  to  him.  And 
just  as  in  Paris  it  was  his  habit  to  speak  constantly 
of  Russia,  of  Russian  literature,  of  Russian  women, 
of  the  enigma  of  the  Slav's  soul,  so  at  Spasskoe 
he  is  inclined  to  speak  for  the  most  part  about 
those  foreign  nations  whose  peculiarities  he  has 
watched  with  such  an  ironical  respectfulness. 
His  listeners  are  a  little  shocked  by  the  corruption 
of  French  morals  which  he  unfolds  to  them,  and 
the  novelist  passes  on  to  the  eccentricities  of 
other  countries.     He  points  out  the  racial  differ- 

157 


158  Two  Russian  Reformers 

ences  between  the  compatriots  of  Goethe  and 
the  compatriots  of  Victor  Hugo.  Then  he  turns 
to  the  EngUsh,  and  comments  on  the  gulf  which 
separates  them  from  every  nation  in  Europe, 
including  Russia  herself.  The  English  appear  to 
him  to  be  a  nation  of  originals.  He  had  visited 
their  celebrities,  and  had  approached  Carlyle 
apparently  with  the  same  respectful  irony  that 
he  had  preserved  before  le  grand  Victor  Hugo. 
Thackeray  had  already  greeted  him  with  roars 
of  laughter  because  he  had  repeated  a  few  lines 
of  his  national  poet  Pushkin.  "  Another  time,"  he 
gossips,  "  I  was  at  Carlyle's  house.  I  never  saw 
anyone  with  whose  originality  I  was  more  struck. 
According  to  him  the  greatest  quality  in  man  was 
a  blind  obedience,  and  he  assured  me  that  every 
nation  that  obeys  its  sovereign  blindly  is  happier 
than  free  England  with  her  constitution.  When 
I  asked  him  who  was  the  greatest  English  poet, 
he  mentioned  a  mediocrity  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  As  for  Byron,  he  considered 
him  beneath  criticism.  Then  he  assured  me  that 
Dickens  had  no  weight  with  the  English,  and 
that  he  was  esteemed  only  abroad.  In  a  word, 
he  retailed  to  me  a  great  many  stupidities  of  the 
same  kind. 

"  One  day  I  happened  to  tell  him  that  I  suffered 
occasionally  from  blurs  in  the  eyes :  I  saw  motes 
in  my  eyes.  Once,  when  out  shooting,  I  thought 
that  I  had  in  front  of  me  a  hare;  I  had  already 


Turgencv  159 

raised  my  gun  to  my  shoulder  and  was  going  to 
fire,  when  I  was  seized  with  the  suspicion  that 
what  I  took  for  a  hare  was  perhaps  only  a  black 
spot  which  I  had  before  my  eyes. 

"  Carlyle  listened  to  me  attentively,  remained 
for  a  moment  thoughtful,  and  then  burst  into 
a  noisy  and  inextinguishable  laugh.  I  could  not 
understand  what  had  put  him  into  such  a  good 
humour ;  I  saw  nothing  comic  in  the  incident  that 
I  had  just  related  to  him. 

"  '  Ha  !  ha  !  ha  !  '  he  exclaimed  at  last,  still 
bursting  with  laughter :  '  to  fire  at  one's  own 
motes  in  the  eyes — Ha !  ha  !  ha  !  To  fire  at  a 
spot — Ha  !  ha  !  ha  !  '  Then  I  understood  the 
cause  of  his  hilarity  ;  a  Frenchman  or  a  Russian 
would  have  found  nothing  laughable  in  my  story." 

And  Turgenev  mildly  sums  up  his  impressions 
of  our  countrymen  in  this  comment  :  "  For  the 
same  reason  an  actor  who  makes  grimaces,  and 
who  in  France  would  be  hissed  off  the  stage  to  the 
accompaniment  of  baked  apples,  will  amuse  the 
English  public  and  make  it  laugh."  It  was  this 
English  laugh,  repeated  by  Thackeray,  echoed  by 
Carlyle,  running  indeed  the  whole  gamut  of  the 
English  temperament,  that  struck  the  Russian  as 
the  most  significant  of  Anglo-Saxon  peculiarities, 
except,  perhaps,  the  national  taste  for  hard  work. 

For  the  rest,  Turgenev  is  a  perfect  mine  of 
cosmopolitan  information  when  at  Spasskoe.  But 
though  he  retails  the  gossip  of  capitals,  he  is  very 


i6o  Two  Russian  Reformers 

much  concerned  about  the  moujiks.  The  im- 
provements of  the  peasants  on  his  estate  have 
been  hanging  fire  exactly  as  they  hang  fire  in 
his  novels.  The  infirmary,  the  hospital,  and  the 
school  that  he  had  commenced  to  build,  all  these 
are  growing  slowly.  Only  a  few  yards  away  from 
his  village,  in  spite  of  all  his  precautions,  a  cabaret 
has  sprung  up  on  the  property  of  a  neighbouring 
prince.  Turgenev  himself,  in  spite  of  his  most 
sincere  wish  to  suppress  drunkenness,  is  forced  to 
give  fetes  in  which  drunkenness  has  no  small 
share.  On  these  occasions  ribbons  and  fal-lals 
are  given  to  the  women,  images  and  sweetmeats 
to  the  children,  but  the  male  population  of  Spass- 
koe  can  be  appeased  only  by  buckets  of  vodka. 
It  is  the  atmosphere  of  the  Old  Russia  unchanged, 
apparently  unchangeable,  and  many  of  these 
scenes  might  form  pages  of  "  The  Annals  of  a 
Sportsman,"  written  more  than  thirty  years 
before.  The  old  kindly  relations  have  been 
renewed  automatically,  and  on  fete  days  the 
peasants  swarm  into  their  master's  garden,  but 
not  to  threaten  him  with  hanging  !  In  front  of 
the  terrace  the  women  sing  their  sombre  songs, 
while  their  husbands  and  brothers  preoccupy 
themselves  solely  with  vodka. 

'*  You  wish,  then,  to  learn  to  read  ?  "  one  of  his 
guests  asked  of  a  group  of  little  girls,  who  replied 
unhesitatingly  :  "  We  ?  Not  at  all.  God  pre- 
serve us  from  it !  "     Yes,  it  was  certainly  the 


Turgencv  i6i 

Old  Russia  in  spite  of  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sports- 
man." Towards  eleven  o'clock  the  guests  would 
meander  uncertainly  back  to  the  village,  very 
polite,  very  thankful  even,  and  regretting  one  thing 
only — the  mildness  of  the  vodka.  Alone  on  the 
terrace  with  his  house  party,  Turgenev  would 
discuss,  just  as  Rudin  or  Lavretsky  might  have 
discussed,  the  progress  of  the  Russian  people 
since  the  abolition  of  the  serfs.  This  was  usually 
the  final  impression  of  his  native  country  left  on 
Turgenev's  mind,  for  these  gala  evenings  were 
almost  always  towards  the  end  of  his  visits. 

Autumn  was  already  at  hand,  and  he  would 
begin  to  think  of  the  Boulevards  and  of  that 
"  European  nest  "  in  the  Rue  de  Douai.  Usually, 
too,  in  the  fall  of  the  year  he  would  be  attacked 
by  his  old  enemy,  gout,  and  he  would  begin  to 
examine  his  own  life  with  the  same  pessimistic 
analysis  that  he  applied  to  the  progress  of  Young 
Russia.  Something  sombre  and  mournful  had 
glided  into  the  Russian  autumn,  and  his  efforts  for 
the  welfare  of  the  moujik  would  seem  to  him  as 
fruitless  and  quixotic  as  those  of  his  Hamlets  of 
the  steppes.  The  same  sense  of  disillusion  that  so 
often  steals  into  his  art  would  steal  into  his  life, 
and  it  would  seem  to  him  that  he  and  his  friends 
were  only  repeating  the  long  Russian  talks,  always 
ending  in  nothing,  which  he  had  so  often  repro- 
duced in  his  books. 

Some  years,  however,  there  were  happier  ter- 


i62  Two  Russian  Reformers 

minations  for  these  Russian  visits.  In  1879,  ^^^ 
example,  when  he  visited  Moscow  for  the  in- 
auguration of  the  statue  of  Pushkin,  he  received 
to  his  astonishment  a  series  of  ovations.  These 
continued  every  evening  when  he  read  aloud 
portions  of  his  "Annals  of  a  Sportsman,"  and  he 
was  often  greeted  with  enthusiasm  even  in  the 
public  streets.  The  same  change  of  attitude  was 
also  visible  in  St.  Petersburg ;  and  two  years  later, 
on  his  last  visit  to  the  capital,  his  reconciliation 
with  the  youth  of  his  country  was  complete.  He, 
the  arch-enemy  of  generous  dreams,  he,  the 
ironical  disbeliever  in  exclusive  conspiracies,  found 
himself  toasting  the  future  of  Young  Russia.  All 
the  old  grudges  were  forgotten  and  forgiven.  The 
Master  was  willing  to  learn  at  last.  Very  soon 
he  would  live  permanently  in  his  own  country 
and  work  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  these  young 
enthusiasts  in  establishing  a  new  era  of  freedom. 

But  the  reaction  followed  only  too  quickly. 
The  elder  generation  began  to  ridicule  him  as  a 
"  vieille  coquette  "  for  having  sought  to  please, 
with  a  complacence  dishonouring  to  his  white 
hair,  the  "  petits  jeunes  "  of  his  native  land.  A 
little  later,  when  he  endeavoured  to  collect  sub- 
scriptions for  a  monument  to  Flaubert  at  Rouen, 
both  generations,  fathers  and  sons,  turned  their 
backs  upon  him.  Turgenev,  in  his  turn,  was  angry, 
but  refused  scornfully  to  defend  himself  in  the 
Russian  newspapers.     A  lady  wrote  to  him  from 


Turgencv  163 

Odessa  to  ask  why  he  troubled  himself  about  a 
monument  to  Flaubert  while  Gogol  was  still 
waiting  for  one,  and  she  reminded  him  in  the 
same  letter  that  the  Russian  people  were  hungry. 
Turgenev  replied  that,  as  Flaubert  had  very 
little  popularity  in  France,  no  Frenchman  would 
be  particularly  grateful  to  him  for  his  trouble,  and 
that  the  people  who  say  "  our  own  poor  first  "  are 
precisely  those  who  give  nothing  to  anybody  at 
all.  As  for  the  motives  for  his  sojourn  in  France 
which  the  lady  imputed  to  him,  these  he  passed 
over  in  silence,  though  it  would  be  only  too  easy 
for  him  to  retort  that  in  France  at  least  he  was 
not  pursued  by  extravagant  insults.  It  would  be 
best,  however,  "  to  blush  for  his  country  and  be 
silent." 

For  the  rest,  he  maintained  that  attacks  of  this 
kind  troubled  him  but  little,  as  he  had  arrived 
at  the  supreme  serenity  of  a  contented  memory. 
"  I  have  had,"  he  said  once  in  conversation, 
"  every  pleasure  that  I  have  been  able  to  wish 
for.  ...  I  have  worked,  I  have  had  successes,  I 
have  loved,  I  have  been  loved.  ...  It  is  a  bad 
thing  to  die  before  the  time  limit,  but  with  me 
the  time  has  come."  But  that  was  the  mental 
attitude  of  only  one  of  the  Turgenevs.  The  other 
Turgenev  was  very  far  removed  from  this  philo- 
sophic contentment.  "  I  am  again,"  he  wrote  to 
Polonsky  as  early  as  1877,  "  in  front  of  a  table, 
and  in  my  soul  there  is  a  darkness  blacker  than 


i64  Two  Russian  Reformers 

night.  The  day  passes  like  an  instant,  empty, 
aimless,  colourless.  There  is  just  time  to  cast  a 
glance  round,  and  then  one  must  take  to  one's  bed 
again.  One  has  no  more  right  to  life,  no  more 
desire  to  live.  .  .  .  You  speak  of  rays  of  glory 
and  of  enchanting  sounds.  .  ,  .  Oh,  my  friend, 
we  are  the  vibrations  of  a  vase,  broken  long  ago." 
It  was  in  a  somewhat  similar  mood  of  absolute 
pessimism  that  Flaubert  had  written  to  George 
Sand  three  years  before  :  "  J'ai  ete  lache  dans  ma 
jeunesse.     J'ai  eu  peur  de  la  vie." 

The  sympathy  between  Turgenev  and  Flaubert 
was  very  close,  and  on  one  side  of  the  Russian's 
nature  there  was  undoubtedly  a  similar  shrinking 
from  the  stupid  violence  of  life,  a  certain  anxiety 
to  preserve  unsullied  the  illusions  of  la  vie  inUrieure. 
This  facet  of  Turgenev — a  facet  which  had  its  place 
in  both  of  those  twin  entities — has  been  described 
with  microscopic  analysis  in  one  of  his  stories. 
More  than  once,  in  that  comparatively  objective 
book,  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman,"  Turgenev 
called  attention  to  the  existence  of  a  type  which 
he  calls  that  of  the  "  superfluous  man."  In 
"  The  Diary  of  a  Superfluous  Man,"  that  subtle 
and  minute  work  of  introspection  which  appealed 
so  to  Guizot,  we  have  undoubtedly  a  glimpse  into 
the  inner  life  of  the  great  Russian  dreamer. 

Turgenev  at  many  periods  of  his  life  had  been 
preoccupied  by  the  idea  of  death.  The  habit  of 
mind  betrayed  by  the  keeper  of  this  diary  was 


Turgenev  165 

intimately  familiar  to  him.  Besides,  in  the 
external  details  of  this  book  there  are  certain 
personal  memories  of  those  early  days  in  the 
garden  of  Spasskoe.  For,  the  man  who  is  waiting 
for  death  recalls,  with  that  physical  ecstasy  of 
memory  of  which  Turgenev  alone  is  master,  the 
half-forgotten  garden  scents,  the  cool  swish  of 
the  long  grass,  the  sun-dried  sweetness  of  stolen 
Novgorod  apples.  Here,  too,  there  are  memories 
of  first  love  as  real  as  in  Zinaiaida  herself.  And 
it  is  in  these  pages  that  we  see  the  young  Turgenev 
breathless  and  tongue-tied  in  the  presence  of  a 
young  serf  girl  whom  he  has  brushed  against  by 
accident  among  the  raspberry  bushes  in  that 
garden  of  secrets.  Twenty  years  ago !  "  The 
Superfluous  Man "  can  hardly  believe  that  all 
these  tastes  of  things  arc  only  memories,  in  so 
persistent  a  wave  of  recollection  do  all  the  scents 
and  sounds  and  inarticulate  murmurings  return  to 
him.  At  the  very  parting  from  life  it  is  to  these 
things — to  the  garden,  the  pond,  the  crooked, 
quiet  paths,  the  tall,  whispering  birch  trees,  to 
the  waiting  lime  trees — that  he  reverts  ;  apart 
from  these  intensely  realised  memories  his  life  is 
empty  as  the  death  for  which  he  is  waiting.  He 
has  grasped  at  happiness,  but  it  has  evaded  him 
like  quicksilver.  He  has  entered  the  intoxicating 
atmosphere  of  passion,  but  it  has  stifled  him  with- 
out infusing  into  him  a  breath  of  its  vitalising 
energy.     Love  and  laughter  and  success,   these 


i66  Two  Russian  Reformers 

things  have  escaped  from  him  as  phantoms.  He 
has  never  mixed  on  terms  of  reahty  with  his 
fellow  human  beings,  and  he  understands  only 
too  well  the  gibe  of  an  acquaintance  who  said 
of  him  that  he  was  "  the  forfeit  which  his  mother 
had  paid  at  the  game  of  life."  As  it  is,  he  moves 
among  men  and  women  like  oil  on  waves  of  water. 
He  is  superfluous,  but  in  spite  of  this,  perhaps 
even  because  of  this,  he  understands.  He  is 
able  to  analyse,  none  better,  the  inner  secrets  of 
these  others  with  whom  he  can  never  share  either 
happiness  or  pain.  His  sympathetic  intelligence, 
denied  as  it  is  all  sympathy  in  return,  is  marvel- 
lously acute,  particularly  in  regard  to  women. 
He  divines  the  most  subtle  transformation  of  all, 
the  transformation  of  the  child  into  the  woman, 
and  for  a  few  days  of  ecstatic  illusion  he,  the 
Superfluous  Man,  believes  that  he  himself  is  the 
magician  who  has  wrought  this  wonder. 

Of  course  he  is  not  the  magician.  The  magician, 
in  point  of  fact,  is  Prince  M — ,  a  dazzling  young 
officer  from  Petersburg  who  is  already  an  experi- 
enced conjurer  in  the  tricks  of  passion.  The 
domestic  circle  in  which  the  diarist  has  long  been  a 
not  unwelcome  habitue  is  immediately  galvanised 
by  the  brilliance  of  the  new-comer.  The  girl 
responds  at  once  to  the  new  stimulus,  and  the 
story  unfolds  itself  on  the  old  certain  lines  of 
tried  experience.  There  is  no  preamble  at  all. 
She  falls  in  love  immediately  with  Prince  M — , 


Turgenev  167 

who  has  his  own  ideas  as  to  what  the  rules  of  the 
game  of  love  should  be.  Then  his  unfortunate, 
unacknowledged  rival  details,  with  a  minuteness 
of  tortured  introspection  which  all  the  combined 
notebooks  of  the  French  realists  could  never  equal, 
the  poor  tricks  and  manoeuvres  of  shame-faced, 
jealous  love.  Every  attitude  of  youth  enraged 
with  itself  is  struck  in  this  faded  provincial  drawing- 
room.  He  will  make  her  sorry  for  having  deserted 
him,  and  then  he  will  be  magnanimous  and  forgive 
her  when  she  returns.  Now  he  ostentatiously 
withdraws  from  her,  and  now  he  haunts  her  with 
his  foolish,  unnecessary  presence. 

And  Liza  too,  had  she  but  known  it,  is  equally 
absorbed  in  a  fool's  paradise.  She  is  drawn  to  the 
Prince  exactly  as  the  Superfluous  Man  is  drawn 
to  her.  The  poor  fellow  insults  his  rival  with 
exceptional  clumsiness  at  a  ball,  and  a  duel  d  la 
barriere  ensues.  The  Superfluous  Man  wounds  the 
Prince  very  slightly,  and  prepares  to  advance 
to  the  barrier.  His  adversary,  however,  is  too 
contemptuous  even  to  torment  him  by  allowing 
him  to  come  any  nearer.  "  The  duel  is  at  an  end," 
he  exclaims,  and  fires  in  the  air. 

The  Superfluous  Man  has  now  become  an  object 
of  horror  instead  of  indifference  to  Liza.  He  is 
an  exile  from  her  family  circle,  and  it  is  only  by 
chance  that  he  can  obtain  glimpses  into  her  life. 
One  such  glimpse  comes  to  him  from  her  carriage 
as  she  drives  past  with  her  parents  and  the  man 


i68  Two  Russian  Reformers 

who  had  bewitched  her.  She  was  half  facing 
his  rival,  and  her  eyes  were  devouring  his  face.  It 
was  the  known  psychological  moment  in  the  game 
of  passion.  The  Superfluous  Man  realised  that 
Liza's  soul  had  made  its  final  surrender.  The 
horses  galloped  past  too  quickly  for  him  to  observe 
the  Prince's  face,  but  he  "  fancied  that  he,  too, 
was  deeply  touched." 

He  meets  her  again  at  church.  There  is  another 
transformation,  and  once  more  he  divines  its  mean- 
ing. The  girl  has  been  forced  to  learn  the  too- 
rapidly-turned-over  pages  of  life.  Already  she 
has  arrived  at  a  very  sombre  page.  The  man  who 
loves  her  follows  at  a  short  distance  until  she 
reaches  her  home.  When  he  returns  to  his  own 
quarters  he  is  whispering  to  himself,  "  She  is  lost." 
His  scrutiny,  the  actual  scrutiny  of  Turgenev, 
into  the  very  soul  of  this  girl  allows  him  no  decep- 
tion. He  is  sorry  for  her,  but  mixed  with  his 
sorrow  there  is  a  certain  arid  pleasure  difficult  to 
analyse.  It  is  as  though  he  were  glad  that  this 
girl  who  had  been  so  listlessly  detached  from  his 
love  and  his  pain  should  have  found  something  at 
last  which  she  must  share  with  him. 

But  there  is  another  transformation  which  is 
very  soon  forced  upon  the  Superfluous  Man.  The 
bitter  farce  of  love  is  over  ;  the  Prince  Charming 
has  returned  to  the  capital ;  busy  tongues  are 
loosened  against  him  at  last.  The  defeated  rival 
whose  jealousy  had  been  ridiculed  is  now  an  ac- 


TURGENEV    IN    OLD    AGE. 


169 


Turgenev  171 

cepted  hero  in  the  Uttle  provincial  town.  Liza's 
parents  receive  him  again  on  the  old  familiar 
footing,  but  there  is  an  abyss  between  the  girl 
and  himself.  Ever  so  long  ago — a  few  weeks 
ago — he  had  watched  the  child  trembling  un- 
consciously into  womanhood.  Afterwards  he  had 
watched  the  woman  expanding  unconsciously 
through  the  generosity  of  love.  In  each  of  these 
transformations  there  had  been  a  natural  ripen- 
ing, harmonious  and  unstrained  as  the  breaking 
into  life  of  spring  and  the  passing  of  spring 
into  summer.  But  now  there  was  something 
new  in  this  too-well-loved  face.  Something  had 
come  into  her  life  through  which  her  youth 
had  already  shrivelled.  Sorrow  had  hardened 
her  into  self-consciousness,  had  hardened  her 
especially  in  the  defence  of  her  secret,  which  she 
treasures  avidly  in  her  heart.  For  herself  she 
feels  neither  regret  nor  shame.  She  has  been  a 
spendthrift  of  her  beauty  and  her  youth,  but  her 
glad  secret  is  a  sufficient  reward.  As  for  this  good, 
devoted  man,  who  loves  her  now  as  always,  he 
is  less  than  nothing  to  her  and  always  will  be 
less  than  nothing.  She  does  not  come  to  the 
Superfluous  Man  shedding  tears  of  regret  for 
having  undervalued  his  faithfulness  so  long.  The 
ironical  and  suspicious  Turgenev  has  watched 
youth's  drama  much  too  closely  for  any  such 
touching  make-belief  as  that.  On  the  contrary, 
never  is  she  more  utterly  devoted  to  the  man  who 

II 


172  Two  Russian  Reformers 

has  betrayed  and  abandoned  her,  than  when  his 
defeated  rival  returns  to  offer  her  again  the  pro- 
tection of  his  old  steadfast  faith.  "  You  can  say 
anything  you  like,"  she  murmurs  to  him,  "  but  let 
me  tell  you  that  I  love  that  man,  and  always  shall 
love  him,  and  do  not  consider  that  he  has  done  me 
any  injury — quite  the  contrary.  ..."  Well,  life 
is  like  that  too,  it  would  seem ;  but  for  the  Super- 
fluous Man  the  third  transformation  is  very  bitter. 
He  had  hoped  to  be  allowed  to  protect  her  from 
the  consequences  of  her  unrepented  folly,  but  even 
in  this  willing  sacrifice  he  is  supplanted  by  another. 
Even  in  this  he  remains  still  the  Superfluous  Man, 
"  the  fifth  wheel  "  of  the  waggon  of  normal  life. 
There  is  nothing  for  him,  it  would  seem,  not  even 
renunciation  and  sacrifice. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  this  almost 
oppressively  intimate  book  Turgenev  uttered  some 
of  the  festering  secrets  of  his  soul,  translating  at 
least  a  phase  of  that  peiir  de  la  vie  which  Flaubert 
had  confessed  to  George  Sand,  who  for  her  part 
knew  nothing  of  it  at  all.  In  all  his  books  the 
recognition  of  the  essential  cruelty  of  life,  the 
stupid  cruelty  as  of  a  scythe-chariot  driven  by 
a  madman,  oppressed  him.  It  oppressed  him  in 
such  a  work  of  introspection  as  this  "  Diary  of  a 
Superfluous  Man,"  just  as  it  had  oppressed  him 
in  that  series  of  almost  objective  studies,  "The 
Annals  of  a  Sportsman."  It  oppressed  him 
particularly  in  a  tale  entitled  "  Mumu,"  which  is 


Turgenev  173 

one  more  bitter  page  snatched  from  the  scattered 
fragments  of  his  autobiography.  Apart  from 
this,  however,  the  httle  tale  has  a  significance 
almost  equal  to  any  in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sports- 
man," because  it  symbolises  without  any  didactic 
Pan-Slavism,  the  desolate  role  of  the  Russian 
moujik.  It  is  all  done  so  easily.  Turgenev  merely 
opens  the  door  of  his  old  home  and  ushers  us  into 
it  without  comment.  He  makes  no  direct  appeal 
to  our  sympathy,  any  more  than  in  his  "Annals 
of  a  Sportsman,"  but  the  story  of  Mumu  is  even 
more  acrid  with  the  stuff  of  tears.  But  there  is 
no  direct  attack  in  the  smooth  suave  narration  of 
facts.  There  is,  indeed,  something  almost  Satanic 
in  the  matter-of-courseness  with  which  he  indicates 
the  various  phases  of  tyranny  in  this  household 
which  he  knew  so  well.  It  is  his  own  mother  who 
rules  this  household,  and  like  another  Tacitus  on 
a  minute  scale,  witliout  raising  an  eyebrow,  without 
a  gesture  of  anger,  her  son  notes  baldly  the  facts 
of  the  case. 

There  was,  it  seems,  in  the  household  of  Madame 
Turgenev,  a  little  drudge  named  Tatiana.  She 
was  twenty-eight  years  old,  very  thin,  with  a  mole 
on  her  left  cheek,  which  was  regarded  as  an  evil 
omen.  Her  fellow  servant  was  a  giant,  and  also 
a  deaf-mute  who  could  only  express  his  emotions 
by  gestures  and  whining  sounds.  His  name  was 
Garassim,  and  he  conceived  a  violent  attachment 
for   this   poor   girl   and   constituted   himself  her 


174  Two  Russian  Reformers 

guardian.  Naturally  she  was  frightened  of  him, 
but  none  the  less  he  persisted,  bringing  her  little 
presents  and  defending  her  always  from  the  ridicule 
of  the  other  servants.  And  gradually  the  little 
drudge  learned  to  confide  in  this  inarticulate  giant 
who  had  become  enthralled  by  her  weakness. 
But  unfortunately  this  obscure  little  love-story 
was  interfered  with  by  their  superiors.  A  certain 
Kapiton,  a  drunken  cobbler,  had  given  trouble  to 
the  mistress  of  the  house,  who  forthwith  issued 
an  order  that  he  should  be  reformed  through 
marriage  with  Tatiana.  The  intendant  passed 
on  the  order  to  the  drunken  cobbler,  who,  except 
for  his  fear  of  the  deaf-mute,  was  willing  enough 
to  submit.  Tatiana  also  was  submissive,  though 
she  also  feared  this  strange  wild  being  who  had 
after  his  fashion  adopted  her.  "  He  will  surely 
kill  me,"  she  said,  but  with  complete  resignation. 
Then  a  horrible  little  plot  occurred  to  this 
whispering  underworld.  There  was  one  thing  in 
particular  that  horrified  and  disgusted  the  deaf- 
mute,  and  that  was  drunkenness.  Tatiana  was 
told  to  feign  drunkenness,  and  the  frightened 
little  drudge  consented  to  the  miserable  comedy, 
which  produced  the  desired  effect.  Thoroughly 
disillusioned,  the  giant  resigned  her  to  the  drunken 
cobbler,  who  not  long  afterwards  was  sent  away 
with  his  wife.  And  now  that  he  was  utterly 
alone  the  deaf-mute  picked  up  a  little  stray  dog, 
so  that  in  the  whole  lonely  world  there  might  be 


Turgenev  175 

some  atom  of  life  that  drew  its  store  of  happiness 
from  him.  His  superiors  had  taken  from  him  tlie 
woman  for  whom  he  had  felt  pity  ;  at  all  events 
the  dog  was  left  to  him — they  would  not  grudge 
him  the  dog.  And  every  emotion  that  stirred  in 
that  chaotic  heart  was  concentrated  upon  the 
little  dog,  Mumu.  The  giant  tended  her  as 
though  she  had  been  his  only  child,  and  on  her 
side  Mumu  felt  safe  only  in  the  presence  of  the 
deaf-mute. 

But,  giant  though  he  was,  he  was  not  strong 
enough  to  keep  Mumu.  The  little  dog  unluckily 
attracted  the  notice  of  their  common  owner. 
The  chatelaine  happened  to  be  in  a  good  humour, 
and  Mumu  was  pronounced  to  be  a  delightful 
little  dog.  Shortly  afterwards,  however,  she  was 
in  a  bad  humour,  and  the  sinister  order  was  issued 
that  Mumu  should  be  removed.  An  attendant 
removed  Mumu,  but  she  escaped  and  returned  to 
her  idolised  master.  But  even  now  Mumu  had 
not  learnt  her  lesson,  but  was  foolish  enough  to 
annoy  the  chatelaine,  who  decreed  this  time  that 
she  should  be  destroyed.  The  giant  shed  tears 
as  he  fed  his  little  dog  for  the  last  time,  then, 
filled  with  one  knows  not  what  puzzled  rage 
against  this  organised  system  of  mindless  tyranny, 
Garassim  fled  from  the  woman  who  had  twice 
robbed  him  of  the  one  thing  dear  to  him  in  life. 

Madame  Turgenev's  adopted  daughter  has  told 
us  the  story  of  Mumu  is  taken  from  life.     Once, 


176  Two  Russian  Reformers 

while  she  was  making  a  tour  of  inspection  through 
her  domain,  Turgenev's  mother  noticed  a  colossus 
at  work  in  the  fields.  Struck  by  his  appearance, 
she  stopped  the  carriage  and  ordered  him  to  be 
brought  to  her.  He  proved  to  be  a  deaf-mute, 
and  because  this  fact  interested  her  she  had  him 
enrolled  then  and  there  among  the  number  of  her 
personal  servants.  In  due  course  Andre,  as  he 
was  called,  was  taken  to  Moscow,  where  at  first 
the  city  life  and  the  paltry  nature  of  his  work 
disheartened  this  giant  of  the  steppes.  But 
gradually  he  became  reconciled  to  the  new  con- 
ditions and  concentrated  all  his  affections  upon 
his  little  dog,  Mumu,  which,  however,  he  was 
compelled  to  destroy  by  the  order  of  his 
mistress. 

But  unlike  the  hero  of  Turgenev's  story  Andre 
did  not  desert  his  cruel  owner  even  after  this. 
For  on  one  occasion  some  one  who  was  in  the 
black  books  of  Madame  Turgenev  seems  to  have 
tried  to  make  a  present  of  a  blue  cretonne  blouse 
to  the  deaf-mute,  who  refused  it  with  emphatic 
gestures.  Madame  Turgenev  was  delighted  when 
the  incident  was  related  to  her,  and  at  nine  o'clock 
the  next  morning,  while  she  was  still  in  bed, 
Andre  was  summoned  to  her  presence.  A  dozen 
serf  girls  were  then  ordered  to  attend  to  the 
giant's  toilet,  as  though  he  were  a  Slav  Odysseus 
and  they  the  very  maidens  of  Nausicaa.  Laughing, 
they  vied  with  one  another  in  assisting  the  puzzled 


Turgenev  i77 

giant  to  make  himself  presentable  for  the  mys- 
terious interview.  In  the  meantime  Madame 
Turgenev  asked  her  adopted  daughter  for  a 
piece  of  blue  ribbon,  and  then  demanded  the  sum 
of  ten  roubles  from  her  intendant.  With  one  gift 
in  each  hand  the  chatelaine  smiled  graciously  on 
Andre,  who  at  sight  of  the  presents  began  to 
mutter  hoarsely  in  token  of  satisfaction.  And 
as  he  left  her  presence  the  dumb  giant  struck  his 
breast  heavily  in  order  to  express  fidelity  and 
gratitude  to  the  woman  who  had  grudged  him  his 
Mumu. 

Undoubtedly  Turgenev's  youth  was  shadowed 
by  the  knowledge  of  many  such  incidents  in  his 
own  home.  Undoubtedly,  too,  the  terrible  word- 
less endurance  of  the  Russian  peasant,  his  good 
qualities  as  well  as  his  bad,  convinced  him  that 
the  time  was  not  ripe  for  the  final  passing  away  of 
that  Old  Russia  of  which  his  own  mother  was 
a  living  symbol.  Yet  in  his  soul  he  is  deeply 
sympathetic  with  that  dumb  hinterland  of  Europe 
of  which  Andre  is  the  prototype.  His  absorption 
in  Andre  and  in  all  that  Andre  stands  for  is  the 
veritable  link  that  most  closely  unites  the  two 
Turgenevs,  kindling  the  sensitive  sympathy  of 
the  one  and  arousing  in  its  own  sad  cause  the 
resentful,  almost  malignant,  suspicion  of  the 
other.  The  memory  of  Andre  and  his  bowed 
silent  comrades  persisted  with  Turgenev  through 
all  his  wanderings.     Nowhere  in  Europe,  at  no 


178  Two  Russian  Reformers 

dinner-party  in  Paris  or  Baden-Baden,  was  he 
ever  really  very  far  away  from  that  terrace  at 
Spasskoe  in  front  of  which  the  Russian  peasant 
women  would  sing  their  sombre  songs  while  their 
husbands  caroused  over  the  vodka.  And  as  old 
age  gained  upon  him  the  impressions  of  his  youth 
came  back  to  him  with  increasing  vividness.  All 
his  life-work,  his  peculiar  dreams  of  freedom 
in  life  and  art,  all  in  a  sense  had  been  anticipated 
in  that  slumbering  Russian  home.  His  very 
pessimism  had  been  experienced  years  and  years 
before  in  the  garden  of  Spasskoe,  and  experience 
was  only  to  deepen  and  broaden  it.  Long,  long 
ago  the  one  Turgenev  had  realised  the  indifference 
of  Nature  as  she  stares  past  her  suppliants  tearing 
at  each  other's  throats  under  the  shadow  of  her 
altar.  But  long  ago  also  the  calm  and  serene 
Turgenev  had  recognised  the  intervention  of 
Tiuman  pity  in  the  merciless  scheme  of  implacable 
Nature.  As  for  the  end,  to  read  its  secret  Tur- 
genev reverted  to  the  beginning,  as  though  the 
very  secret  beyond  death  had  been  absorbed  at 
the  commencement  of  life. 

The  dissimulation  of  the  great  novelist,  that 
kindly  dissimulation  which  had  so  often  made 
for  him  such  bitter  enemies,  had  been  his  role 
even  in  boyhood,  when  he  bowed  hopelessly 
and  helplessly  before  his  mother's  dull,  tranquil 
tyranny.  How  watchful  he  had  been  before  this 
symbol   of   dominance,  this  woman  who   played 


Turgenev  i79 

with  human  beings'  hves  less  carefully  than  a 
child  with  costly  toys !  It  was  this  malignant 
application  of  brute  force  that  had  deepened  at 
a  most  impressionable  age  his  deep  inherited 
suspicion  of  all  things.  And  in  the  very  late 
years  of  his  life,  when  he  had  left  far  behind  him 
both  the  passion  and  the  elan  of  youth  and  the 
aspirations,  national  and  personal,  of  manhood, 
and  had  approached  those  veiled  portals  of  thought 
which  lie  beyond  the  barriers  of  human  reason, 
Turgenev  faced  the  supreme  mystery  neither 
with  the  supplication  of  the  contrite  nor  with 
the  arrogant  curiosity  of  a  later  Faust.  But, 
after  his  own  fashion,  he  was  imperceptibly  drawn 
away  from  those  realities  which  he  had  depicted 
with  such  infinite  sureness  of  touch,  and  carried 
into  a  world  of  phantoms.  Yet  even  in  this  new 
world  there  remained,  steadfast  and  inseparable, 
the  two  Turgenevs  that  had  shadowed  each 
other  in  the  garden  of  Spasskoe. 

One  evening  at  Magny,  the  younger  de  Goncourt, 
who  was  lying  as  usual  on  the  sofa,  declared  that 
he  experienced  already  the  sensation  of  being 
dead.  "  As  for  me,"  said  Turgenev,  "  it  is  rather 
different.  You  know  how  sometimes  there  is  in 
a  room  an  imperceptible  perfume  of  musk  that 
one  cannot  get  rid  of  ?  .  .  .  Very  well  :  there  is 
around  me  something  like  the  odour  of  death,  of 
dissolution."  Then  after  a  short  silence  he  added, 
"  I  believe  that  I   can  find  the  explanation  of 


i8o  Two  Russian  Reformers 

that  in  the  fact  of  my  inabiUty,  now  absolute, 
to  love."  Turgenev,  indeed,  had  commenced  to 
lose  something  of  his  power  of  evoking  the  con- 
crete ghosts  of  his  regrets,  the  ghosts  that  flut- 
tered to  him  from  the  faint  frou-frou  of  skirts, 
that  were  aroused  from  the  long  ago  by  chance 
footsteps,  that  were  heard  from  beyond  the  wind- 
ing of  a  road,  from  a  whisper  vibrating  through 
shadows,  from  a  perfumed  handkerchief.  And 
when  these  ghosts  refused  to  come  back  to  him  he 
realised  that  he  had  never  known  that  deep,  quiet 
love  which  he  so  often  interpreted  in  women  but 
so  very  seldom  in  men.  At  the  bottom  of  every- 
thing else  there  was  always  a  lurking  suspicion 
whicli  made  absolute  surrender  almost  impossible 
to  Turgenev.  Nor  could  he,  like  Faust,  search 
for  Helen,  deepening  his  experience  through 
Marguerite  on  the  way.  It  was  not  in  his  nature 
to  search  at  all  for  strange  experiences,  but  only 
to  absorb  them  when  they  hovered  close  to  him. 
After  all  he  was  at  no  time  wholly  divorced  from 
that  Sanin  who  had  lived  like  a  plant  long  ago  in 
Frankfort. 

And  in  these  late  years,  when  he  could  not 
even  hope  to  believe  in  the  political  creed  of 
Young  Russia,  he  commenced  to  understand  that 
he,  the  enchanter  of  so  many  realities  of  romance, 
had  been  always  incapable  of  realising  the  meaning 
of  his  own  enchantment.  He  had  illuminated 
others  by  his  magic,  but  his  own  heart  had  re- 


Turgenev  i^ 

mained  dark.  And  now,  instead  of  becoming 
absorbed  by  the  suggestion  of  some  woman  whose 
soul  he  might  interpret,  he  is  absorbed  by  the 
soulless  presence  of  death.  For  a  long  time  he 
has  been  hurrying  in  front  of  it,  snatching  year 
after  year  from  its  blind  gluttony.  And  in  the 
good  moments  he  had  been  able  to  laugh  at  it  in 
spite  of  the  warnings  of  his  doctors.  After  all, 
he  was  a  Slav,  and  he  acknowledged  that  he  f 
appreciated  that  Slavonic  mist.  He  understood, 
too,  that  warning  not  to  think  of  the  cold  lest  one 
should  die  of  it. 

And  in  the  last  works  of  all  he  reverts  to  two 
distinct  themes — to  this  obsession  of  death,  with 
the  suggestion  of  a  personal  survival,  and  to  that 
youth  which  now  seemed  to  him  but  as  yesterday. 
In  "  Clara  Militch,"  the  sub-title  of  which  is 
"  After  Death,"  the  great  novelist  takes  up  both 
these  themes.  Aratof  is  attracted  by  Clara  Militch, 
but  he  misunderstands  her  sentiments  for  him. 
She  has  been  an  actress,  and  he  believes  that  she 
has  been  acting  in  regard  to  himself.  Suddenly, 
he  learns  through  a  newspaper  of  her  death,  and 
from  that  moment  he  becomes  obsessed  in  a 
sense  that  he  has  never  been  obsessed  by  her  when 
she  was  alive.  Even  though  she  is  dead,  and  it  is 
too  late  for  earthly  happiness,  he  will  learn  the 
soul  of  this  woman.  Obeying  this  impulse,  he 
makes  his  way  to  the  house  in  which  she  had 
died,  and  returns  with  a  photograph  of  the  dead 


i82  Two  Russian  Reformers 

girl  and  a  fragment  from  her  private  diary. 
Even  now,  he  does  not  know  whether  he  does  or 
does  not  love  Clara.  But  he  waits  for  her,  and 
he  clings  to  these  associations  which  seem  to  link 
his  own  earthly  life  with  her  mysterious  survival. 
And  in  this  ecstasy  of  anticipation  wholly  detached 
from  the  normal  routine  of  life  he  continues  until 
the  day  on  which  they  find  him  dead  in  his  bed. 
His  cold  fingers  are  clutching  a  lock  of  black 
hair  which  cannot  be  extricated  from  their  grasp, 
while  an  untranslatable  happiness  is  stamped  upon 
the  intent  dead  face. 

But  even  in  these  last  works  the  attitude  of 
Turgenev  is  almost  always  sane  and  even  a  little 
cold.  For,  the  suspicious  Turgenev  persisted  to 
the  very  end,  even  when  the  novelist  fringed  upon 
the  borders  of  the  occult.  Very  charming  is  the 
sketch  entitled  "A  Free  Russian  Village";  but 
in  that  very  year  he  wrote  a  fragment  describing  a 
pursuing  old  woman  which  gives  us  the  last  grimace 
of  an  octopus-like  human  destiny.  Typical,  too, 
of  the  resultant,  so  to  speak,  of  Turgenev's  attitude 
towards  life  is  that  dialogue  between  the  Jung- 
frau  and  the  Finsteraarhorn  in  which  the  Alpine 
Mountains  peer  out  at  the  world  after  intervening 
cycles  of  centuries  during  which  the  race  of  man 
dwindles  and  fades  and  dies.  Then,  in  the  opinion 
of  these  exponents  of  Nature's  merciful  philosophy, 
all  is  at  last  well  with  the  world.  In  "  The  Dog  " 
there  is  once  more  the  obsessing  motif  of  death ; 


Turgenev  183 

and  in  "  My  Opponent  "  the  ghost  of  a  dead 
comrade  returns,  but,  more  enigmatic  than  even 
the  Alpine  Mountains,  says  nothing  whatever 
concerning  human  fate.  In  "  The  Last  Meeting  " 
the  note  of  reconciUation  through  death  is  sounded 
by  the  naive  serene  Turgenev,  but  in  "  Love 
and  Hunger  "  his  other  twin-self  whispers  mock- 
ingly, "  Love  and  hunger — their  aim  is  the  same 
— preserA^ation  of  life,  of  one's  own  life  and  the 
life  of  others — the  life  of  all."  In  another  beauti- 
ful prose  poem  he  utters  the  mournful  hopeless 
"  Stop  !  "  to  youth  hurrying  carelessly  on  to 
age  and  death. 

In  "  The  Beggar  "  we  have  a  Russian  touch  of 
the  kindly  sort,  when  the  mendicant  is  thankful 
for  the  clasp  of  a  human  hand.  He  is  not  the 
only  one  who  is  grateful,  for  Turgenev  adds,  "  I 
felt  that  I,  too,  had  received  a  gift  from  my 
brother."  In  the  same  little  volume  we  have 
some  comments  on  the  line  of  a  song — "  How 
lovely  and  fresh  those  roses  were  !  "  And  in  this 
song  from  long  ago,  ghosts  seem  to  come  rustling 
back  to  this  psychologist  of  passion  who  could 
never  wholly  love.  Russian  scenes,  scenes  of  his 
home  and  of  those  first  breathless  transports  of 
youth's  guess  at  love,  became  for  the  moment  more 
real  to  him  than  the  actuality  of  age  and  the  nearing 
menace  of  Death.  In  such  moments  he  is  really 
Sanin  again,  living  over  once  more  that  far-off 
romance  with  the  Italian  girl  at  Frankfort.     For, 


184  Two  Russian  Reformers 

in  moments  such  as  these,  the  savour  of  hfe 
returns  to  him,  so  that  in  age  itself  he  can  renew 
without  mockery  the  ecstasy  of  youth.  But  the 
bubble  breaks  only  too  swiftly,  and  in  "  The 
Labourer  and  the  Man  with  the  White  Hand  " 
bitter  memories,  also  real  enough,  return  to  him. 
A  useless  idealist  pleads  for  liberty,  works  after  his 
fashion  for  liberty,  and  foolishly,  uselessly,  dies  for 
liberty.  And  when  he  has  paid  this  last  price 
for  the  cause  one  of  the  genuine  people  exclaims 
to  his  comrade,  "  Don't  you  suppose  we  could  get 
a  bit  of  the  rope  he's  hanged  with  ?  "  The 
vision  of  "  Spring  Torrents  "  has  faded  into  the 
acrid  memory  of  Rudin. 

Only  three  months  before  his  death  he  was  to 
become  still  more  intimately  personal  in  these  final 
fragments.  For  in  "  Fire  at  Sea  "  he  dictated 
in  French  a  sketch  of  that  incident  on  board  the 
Nicholas  I.  which  had  made  so  deep  an  impression 
upon  his  memory.  In  this  sketch  he  makes  it 
quite  clear  that  he,  as  a  boy  of  nineteen,  apart 
from  his  first  not  unnatural  spasm  of  terror,  had 
behaved  exceedingly  well.  In  the  first  moment 
of  that  terror  it  seems  that  he  offered  the  sum 
of  ten  thousand  roubles  to  a  sailor  to  save  him, 
but  he  denies  implicitly  that  he  used  the  words 
"  I  am  the  only  son  of  a  widow."  Afterwards  a 
sailor  reproached  him  and  reminded  him  about 
the  ten  thousand  roubles  :  "  But  as  I  was  not 
quite  sure  of  his  identity,  and  as  besides  he  had 


Turgenev  185 

done  nothing  whatever  for  me,  I  offered  him  a 
thaler,   which  he  accepted  gratefuUy." 

Turgenev  had  not  himself  been  guilty  of 
cowardice,  but  in  this  sketch,  written  so  close  to 
his  death,  he  notes  a  pathetic  incident  observed 
with  characteristic  minuteness  in  spite  of  the 
horrors  of  a  fire  at  sea  :  "I  perceived  in  the 
middle  of  a  group  of  passengers  a  general  of  tall 
stature,  his  clothes  literally  soaked  with  water, 
who  stood  motionless,  leaning  against  a  bench 
which  he  had  just  detached  from  a  boat.  I 
learned  that  in  the  first  moment  of  terror  he  had 
brutally  pushed  back  a  woman  who  wanted  to  pass 
in  front  of  him  so  as  to  leap  from  the  vessel  in  one 
of  the  first  embarkations  which  had  foundered. 
Seized  by  a  steward,  who  had  flung  him  back  on 
to  the  vessel,  the  old  soldier  became  ashamed  of 
his  momentary  cowardice,  and  took  an  oath  that 
except  the  captain  he  would  be  the  last  to  leave 
the  ship.  He  was  a  tall  man,  pale,  with  a  red 
scar  on  his  forehead,  and  he  kept  casting  around 
him  contrite  and  resigned  glances  as  though  he 
were  asking  for  pardon," 

In  no  single  one  of  his  important  works  does 
Turgenev  show  more  minuteness  of  observation 
than  in  this  sketch  which  links  his  boyhood  to 
the  very  end  of  his  life.  He  noted,  this  boy  of 
nineteen,  all  the  variations  of  stupefying  fear  that 
paralysed  so  many  around  him.  And  again,  after 
all  these  years  of  weary  experience,  there  returned 


i86  Two  Russian  Reformers 

to  him  as  from  yesterday  the  shrill  dolorous  cries 
of  women  as  they  leaped  desperately  for  safety. 
Turgenev  was  admittedly  Sanin,  who  "  lived  like 
a  plant,"  but  he  was  also  some  one  else  quite 
different.  That  extraordinary  receptivity  that 
made  him,  as  it  were,  a  plate  for  receiving  the 
deepest  and  the  most  fugitive  impressions  was 
abnormally  sensitive  in  youth,  and  never  more 
so  than  on  that  exploited  occasion  when  he  was 
supposed  to  have  cried  out,  "Save  me!  I  am 
the  only  son  of  a  widow :  ten  thousand  roubles 
to  him  who  will  save  me  !  " 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  death  of  Flaubert  was  a  turning-point  in 
the  old  age  of  Ivan  Turgenev ;  the  Magny 
dinners  were  no  longer  the  same ;  it  was 
no  longer  possible  for  the  Slavonic  mist  to  conceal 
the  ever-nearing  phantom  which  was  becoming 
imperceptibly  the  one  reality.  The  great  Russian 
himself  was  becoming  a  phantom  at  these 
"dinners  of  the  hissed  authors"  which  he  had 
so  often  charmed  with  his  genius. 

"  Le  diner,"  notes  the  Journal,  "commence 
gaiement,  mais  voila  que  Tourguenief  parle  d'une 
constriction  du  coeur,  survenue  de  nuit,  constriction 
melee  a  une  grande  tache  brune  sur  le  mur,  en 
face  de  son  lit,  et  qui,  dans  un  cauchemar  ou  il 
se  trouvait  moitie  eveille,  moitie  dormant,  etait 
la  mort."  His  health  grew  worse  and  worse, 
and  his  doctors  called  his  malady  gouty  angina 
pectoris.  "It  is  the  term  that  we  use,"  said 
Charcot  to  Daudet,  "  when  we  do  not  know  what 
to  say."  But  even  in  the  midst  of  the  most 
acute  pain  Turgenev  was  careful  to  analyse  the 
variations  of  suffering.  "During  the  operation," 
he  once  observed  to  Daudet,  "  I  thought  of  our 

187  12 


1 88  Two  Russian  Reformers 

dinners,  and  I  searched  for  words  to  convey  a  just 
impression  of  steel  piercing  my  flesh  as  though  it 
were  a  knife  cutting  a  banana." 

During  even  this  last  year  his  strength  allowed 
him  to  work.  He  was  busy  with  "  Clara  Militch," 
and  last  of  all  with  '*  Fire  at  Sea."  Towards  the 
end  of  autumn  he  remained  alone  at  Bougival, 
the  Viardots  having  returned  to  Paris.  In 
October  he  writes  :  "I  live  still,  if  living  is  being 
unable  to  stir  or  to  stand  upright  .  .  .  that  is 
how  oysters  live  !  And  there  still  remain  for  me 
distractions  that  they  do  not  possess."  But  in 
spite  of  everything  his  creative  energy  was  still 
productive,  and  a  visitor  to  whom  he  narrated 
the  troubling  dreams  that  came  to  him  at  night, 
received  the  impression  that  the  world  of  litera- 
ture would  be  enriched  by  another  volume  of 
"  Poems  in  Prose."  Again,  he  was  able  to  throw 
aside  all  purely  personal  distractions,  even  those 
of  intense  physical  suffering,  and  from  his  death- 
bed he  implored  Tolstoy  not  to  betray  Russia  by 
renouncing  its  literature. 

.  To  the  very  last  he  placed  literature  before  all 
else,  and  as  one  glances  back  at  the  life  of  this 
complex  cosmopolitan  it  is  only  possible  to  guess 
at  his  inner  nature  through  this  devotion  to  art. 
For  the  absorption  in  the  analysis  of  temperament 
was  as  incarnate  in  Turgenev  as  the  sense  of  duty 
itself.  To  him,  as  to  Flaubert,  external  incidents 
were  merely  irritating  disturbances,  and  it  was 


Turgenev  189 

from  the  inner  life  of  the  ego  th^t  they  drew,  each 
after  his  fashion,  the  savour  of  an  impression,  the 
stab  of  a  regret,  sights,  sounds,  illusions,  dreams, 
all  the  delicate  contradictory  fantasies  that 
hearty  well-meaning  people  would  brush  aside 
as  the  cobwebs  of  Progress.  At  once  meditative 
and  alert,  serene  and  ironical,  Turgenev  considered 
the  heroic  antics  of  a  hero  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
sense  essentially  uninteresting,  essentially  childish 
attempts  to  interfere  with  the  slow  monotonous 
undulations  of  Nature,  that  Juggernaut  whom 
none  can  either  hurry  or  evade. 

Often,  however,  he  rebelled  against  his  own 
disinclination  for  the  world  of  action.  He,  who 
was  in  so  many  ways  so  close  to  Hamlet,  has 
openly  avowed  his  preference  for  Hamlet's  anti- 
thesis, Don  Quixote.  In  book  after  book  his 
irony  played  mockingly  round  that  lethargy  of 
the  Slav,  from  which  he  knew  that  he  himself  was 
by  no  means  emancipated.  Steeped  as  he  was 
in  the  culture  of  the  West,  he  strove  to  persuade 
himself  that  he,  too,  was  working  for  definite, 
practical  aims.  He  rebelled  even  against  his 
own  inalienable  distaste  for  rebellion.  He  tried 
to  persuade  himself  that  he  liked  the  practical 
Solomin,  and  he  tried  to  persuade  the  world  that 
he  was  fascinated  by  Bazarof .  The  one  Turgenev, 
indeed,  did  surrender  himself  naively  to  the 
glamour  of  a  new  type,  but  the  other  Turgenev 
watched   him   with    ironical   suspicion,    analysed 


rgo  Two  Russian  Reformers 

him,  cross-questioned  him,  tripped  him  up,  ridi- 
culed him   even   a  httle  for  opposing  his  puny 
personahty  with  such  confidence  to  that  impla- 
cable scheme  of  things  of  which  he  was  but  one 
unconsidered    atom.     Turgenev    has    often    been 
charged  with  being  the  romantic  of  the  realists 
by  one  party,   and   of  being  the  realist  of  the 
romantics  b\^   the  other.     His   "  method,"   as   a 
matter   of   fact,   was  one  of   vision,    indefinable, 
incapable   of   being   explained   even   by   himself. 
His  lesson,  if  one  may  at  all  use  such  a  word  in 
relation  to  so  profound  an  artist,  is  that  Nature  is 
eternally  indifferent,  even  as  that  "  calm  strong 
angel"  of  Huxley,  but  that  on  the  whole,  in  spite 
of  endless  inevitable  antagonisms,  endless  rever- 
sions to  atavism,  and  endless  contradictions,  poor 
human  nature  is  most  certainly  kind.     It  is  not 
Nature  that,  according  to  Turgenev,  smiles  and 
soothes    the    toil-worn    children    whom    she    has 
flung  so  carelessly  into  being.     It  is  rather  these 
,chil4ren,  the  ordinary  men  and  women,  unheroic 
and    undeserving    in    the    ordinary    sense,    who, 
clustering  humbly   together,   console   each   other 
in   the   face   of    their   implacable   Mother   whose 
set  smile  ceases  more  and  more  to  deceive. 

Such  was  Turgenev' s  philosophy,  and  it  survived 
all  the  querulous  attacks  that  were  made  upon  him. 
Perhaps  it  was  reflected  from  his  own  unostenta- 
tious generosity,  which,  so  often  deceived,  so  often 
vilified,  was  never  found  wanting.     His  country- 


Turgencv  191 

men  often  reproached  him  for  living  in  Paris;  it 
was  an  axiom  among  needy  Russians  that  looking 
for  employment  meant  visiting  Turgenev.  But 
his  kindness  was  almost  always  charged  with  a 
certain  irony  of  experience.  Once,  for  example, 
he  heard  of  a  Russian  being  ill  in  Paris.  The 
young  man  had  submitted  a  manuscript  to  a 
journal,  and  Turgenev,  after  his  old  familiar  habit, 
wrote  urgently  to  the  editor  on  behalf  of  his 
unhappy  compatriot.  "But,"  he  added,  "if  3^ou 
do  not  think  that  you  should  publish  it,  leave 
the  author  under  the  impression  that  you  will, 
and  send  him  two  hundred  roubles,  charged  to 
my  account."  That  attitude  was  thoroughly 
characteristic  of  this  kindly  and  ironical  weigher 
of  human  souls  who,  so  often  attacked,  cared  so 
little  to  defend  himself.  This  pessimist  who  dis-  / 
believed  in  the  mercifulness  of  Nature  never  lost ' 
sympathy  \yith  human  nature.  Nature,  he  had 
grasped  long  ago,  in  the  garden  of  Spasskoe,  is 
indifferent  alike  to  tears  of  supplication  or  to  tears 
of  revolt,  but  supplication  and  revolt  alike  are 
evidence  of  man's  idealism,  which  has  projected 
the  symbol  of  an  all-merciful  and  bountiful  Nature 
that  will  protect  the  least  of  her  children.  For 
this  poor  men  and  women  should  be  revered, 
perhaps,  a  little  ;  above  all  they  should  be  par- 
doned. And  the  humble  and  the  weak  should 
never  be  crushed  lower,  particularly  when  they 
are  willing  to  help  those  who  are  even  humbler 


192  Two  Russian  Reformers 

and  weaker  than  themselves.  But  as  for  those 
boisterous  Titans  who  assert  their  little  indi- 
vidualities in  the  face  of  the  maelstrom  of  destiny, 
to  them  Turgenev  is  constitutionally  antipathetic 
even  when  he  tries  hardest  to  believe  in  them. 

Most  of  the  great  novelists  have  expressed  in 
a  single  book  what  on  the  whole  may  be  taken 
for  their  guess  at  the  meaning  of  life.  One  novel 
may  be  the  expression  of  one  stage  of  intellectual 
and  emotional  experience,  while  another  may  be 
the  expression  of  quite  another  stage.  But  in  the 
works  of  many  great  authors  one  can  find  often  a 
book  which  is  also  the  book,  and  sometimes  this 
volume  of  finality  is  also  the  book  of  youth. 
Dickens,  for  example,  in  "  David  Copperfield  " 
has  spelt  out  the  scheme  of  things  as  it  appeared 
to  him  in  a  book  which  recalls  his  youth  as  poign- 
antly as  any  autobiography  in  the  world.  Here, 
youth  and  romance  with  all  their  fleeting  and 
exquisite  savour  renew  themselves  for  a  brief 
spell,  pass,  and  fade  and  die.  And  the  meaning 
of  life,  at  first  so  fantastically  confused,  takes  to 
itself  at  last  the  worn-out  line  stamped  by  the 
experience  of  generations  who  in  turn  had  dreamed 
and  revolted  and  conformed.  One  after  the 
other  these  childish  companions  of  Dickens' 
boyhood  come  to  the  curb  of  life,  accept  the 
harness  of  destiny,  learn  to  fit  in,  claiming  tran- 
quilly their  just  meed — no  less,  no  more — of  happi- 
ness and  pain.     As  in  a  realised  dream  one  learns 


Turgenev  193 

the  meaning  of  the  years  in  such  a  book  of  bitten- 
in  experience  as  "  David  Copperfield,"  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  Dickens  with  his  Enghsh  tra- 
ditions neither  would  nor  could  express  nakedly 
and  fearlessly  that  contorted  destiny  upon  whose 
cornices  so  many  delicate  organisms  are  stupidly 
broken.  But  even  Dickens,  with  all  his  hearty 
optimism  and  his  broad  sane  confidence  in  the 
ultimate  furtherance  of  the  general  good,  even 
Dickens  recognised  that  in  the  very  nature  of 
things,  and  quite  independent  of  any  good  or  ill 
desert,  there  are  some  who  will  be  inevitably 
broken  upon  that  bed  of  Procrustes  that  is  so 
often  called  the   "  lap  of  Nature." 

That  is,  of  course,  a  mere  commonplace.  What 
makes  a  "  David  Copperfield "  and  all  such 
personal  records  so  significant  is  not  that  they 
relate  mere  personal  experience,  but  because 
they  suggest  through  the  medium  of  such  a  record 
what  life  as  a  whole  has  really  meant  to  the 
author.  Steerforth,  for  instam  e,  gives  one  the 
illusion  of  life  lived  with  intensity.  Steerforth, 
in  spite  of  the  very  Victorian  melodrama  which 
surrounds  him,  in  spite  of  little  Em'ly's  naive 
tears  and  Rosa  Dartle's  hysterics,  does  stand  for 
a  human  soul  striving  uselessly  and  arrogantly  to 
live  out  its  own  will.  And  in  dealing  with  Steer- 
forth, Dickens,  as  though  too  steeped  in  personal 
memories  for  the  indulgence  of  any  mere  censure, 
relates  the  life-story  with  a  touch  of  reality  that 


194  Two  Russian  Reformers 

pierces  easily  through  the  melodrama  of  habit. 
The  world  may  forget  a  thousand  oddities  and 
humours  which  once  wrung  tears  of  laughter  from 
age  and  youth  alike,  but  the  w^orld  will  not  wholly 
forget,  in  spite  of  the  crude  setting  of  the  picture, 
that  figure  upon  whom  the  English  novelist 
flashed  the  very  glamour  of  destiny.  There  is  no 
moralising  here,  no  juggling  with  known  facts. 
At  once  destructive  and  self-destroying,  as  Steer- 
forth  the  boy  was,  so  the  man  will  be.  But  one 
bad  quality  does  not  necessarily  mar  a  good 
one,  perhaps  equally  strong.  A  villain,  except  in 
melodrama,  is  not  always  a  villain,  and  if  one 
glances  back  steadily,  one  must  realise  that  life  is 
like  that  in  its  action  upon  character — that  life, 
in  fact,  in  its  action  on  those  who  will  not  submit, 
is  like  an  octopus  whose  tentacles  fasten  ever  on 
the  weakest  part  in  its  moment  of  lowest  resist- 
ance. Dickens,  glancing  down  into  the  remote 
recesses  of  his  own  heart,  drew  the  core  of  the 
thing  with  naked  truthfulness.  For  this  book 
of  youth  is  also  the  book  of  final  experience, 
in  which  there  is  no  whitewashing  on  the  one 
hand  nor  declamatory  judgment  on  the  other. 
"  David  "  may  survive  placidly,  adapting  himself 
willingly  to  the  lowered  tension  that  succeeds 
the  storm.  Steerforth  will  inevitably  be  engulfed 
in  the  whirlpool  from  which  he  will  never  emerge. 
It  is  not  merely  an  external  storm  of  the  elements 
that  dashes  the  corpse  of  the  betrayer  on  to  that 


Turgenev  i95 

lonely  coast.  Without  any  such  external  punish- 
ment there  was  in  Steerforth's  own  heart  that 
which  would  have  lashed  him  swiftly  to  the 
quietude  of  death. 

That  was  a  book  of  experience  as  well  as  of 
youth.  In  "Sapho"  Alphonse  Daudet  has  given 
us  his  book  of  experience  as  opposed  to  "  Le 
Petit  Chose,"  his  book  of  youth.  In  the  first  book 
youth  lives  like  Sanin,  literally  like  a  "  plant  " 
that  one  watches  in  its  growth  ;  in  the  second 
youth  falls  away  like  a  beautiful  scarred  thing, 
whose  very  memory  is  a  torture.  But  just  as  in 
"  David  Copperfield  "  Dickens  passes  altogether 
beyond  the  range  of  personal  experience,  so 
Daudet,  the  adopted  Parisian,  gives  us  in  "  Sapho  " 
not  merely  his  own  verdict  upon  existence,  but 
something  of  universal  human  experience.  He 
also,  in  these  pages,  like  Dickens  in  that  very 
different  book,  seems  to  say  to  us :  "  Here  is  life 
as  I  at  least  have  found  it.  Such  as  it  is  I  have 
written  it  down." 

In  the  make-believe  world  of  fiction,  with  its 
stereotyped  tricks  and  conventions,  one  cannot 
be  too  grateful  for  these  sombre  memories  of 
reality  which  genius  throws  suddenly  into  clear 
perspective.  "  Sapho  "  in  one  sense  is  written 
in  those  first  few  pages,  when  the  young  artist 
carries  the  beautiful,  terrible  woman  up  that 
universal  flight  of  stairs.  She  is  so  light  at  first,  a 
precious  burden  that  one  bears  as  easily  as  youth 


196  Two  Russian  Reformers 

itself ;  but  presently  the  young  man's  breath 
comes  more  quickly,  and  a  little  later  he  is  panting 
beneath  the  binding  arms  of  Sapho.  Already 
she  is  wound  around  him,  the  very  octopus  of  life 
to  which  youth  has  offered  its  own  naked  throb- 
bing heart.  All  illusions  perish  in  this  book  by 
the  creator  of  the  joyous  ''  Tartarin."  Nowhere 
else,  perhaps,  in  all  literature  are  the  wrappings  of 
hope  more  ruthlessly  stripped  from  the  skeleton 
of  destiny.  There  is  nothing  at  all  to  be  said,  for 
who  should  blame  even  Sapho,  the  parasite,  who 
consumes  herself  as  well  as  others  ? 

"  Sapho "  is  a  book  written  under  the  per- 
mission to  write  truthfully,  a  concession  which 
has  been  accorded  to  no  English  book,  as 
Thackeray  reminds  us,  since  "  Tom  Jones."  In 
"  Vanity  Fair,"  however,  his  own  book  of  experi- 
ence, he  has  written,  always  with  the  English 
reserve,  a  genuine  tablet  of  life.  That,  and  no 
other,  is  the  book  of  Thackeray's  final  experience, 
the  book  which,  had  none  other  survived,  would 
have  revealed  what  life  meant  to  this  English 
novelist  who  in  his  great  moments  was  also  a 
world  novelist.  That  is  how  the  play  goes  through 
Thackeray's  opera  glasses,  and  nobody  can  avoid 
the  play,  the  play  which  dominates  all  the  little 
private  dramas  of  one's  own  heart.  Perhaps  no 
one  but  an  Englishman  could  have  been  so  un- 
embarrassed by  so  alluring  an  heroine  as  Becky, 
but  Thackeray  was  watching  her  over  his  mid- 


Turgenev  197 

Victorian  spectacles,  stabbing  down  into  the 
nullity  of  her  soul.  She  too,  no  less  than  Sapho, 
was  one  of  these  parasites  flung  into  being  by 
environment,  fed  upon  human  lives,  whom  it  is 
perhaps  idle  to  judge,  but  whom  it  is  certainly 
death  to  cherish.  "  But  one  should  not  be  so 
hard  upon  Becky,"  people  have  been  chirping 
ever  since  the  book  was  wTitten ;  "one  should 
be  an  artist  and  not  a  moralist."  The  borrowed 
cliche  has  become  a  tradition  of  English  criticism, 
which  is  itself  generally  moralising  only  too  thinly 
veiled.  The  great  Victorian  novelist,  who  was 
writing  down  what  life  as  a  whole  meant  to  him, 
knew  better  than  that.  One  after  the  other  those 
characters  of  his,  once  so  vital  and  now  too  quickly 
disparaged,  may  fade  and  perhaps  even  pass  into 
nothingness,  but  there  is  something  in  "  Vanity 
Fair  "  which  assuredly  will  never  perish.  It  is  the 
actual  register  of  life  as  it  appeared  at  a  particular 
time  to  an  observer  who  had  thoroughly  absorbed 
his  own  environment  and  who  occasionally  rose 
to  the  Virgilian  contemplation  of  affairs.  It  is 
perhaps  a  half-truth  to  say  that  what  is  really 
significant  in  a  work  of  art  is  what  is  left  over 
wlien  the  descriptive  adjectives  have  been  ex- 
hausted. When  everything  has  been  said  about 
"  Vanity  Fair  "  there  remains  in  it  an  aroma  of 
human  experience,  a  little  acrid  perhaps,  but 
with  its  harshness  softened  by  an  incongruous 
mingling    of    the    recognition    that    all    things, 


igS  Two  Russian  Reformers 

good  and  bad  alike,  pass  to  the  same  dolorous 
end. 

Very  different  is  another  real  English  novel, 
another  final  book  which  is  at  once  a  record  of 
experience  and  a  memory  of  youth.  George 
Eliot  utters  in  "  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  "  some- 
thing of  that  sombre  wisdom  which  became  her 
ultimate  philosophy  of  endurance,  and  at  the  same 
time  narrates  the  story  of  her  childhood  in  words 
that  are  charged  with  the  wonder  of  life  and  art. 
In  other  books  she  was,  seemingly,  to  search  more 
restlessly  into  the  recesses  of  the  human  heart,  to 
reveal  more  complex  secrets,  to  sound  deeper 
plummets  of  life.  But  it  is  in  "  The  Mill  on  the 
Floss  "  that  all  the  wistful  wonder  of  childhood 
and  all  the  charmed  regret  of  experience  converge. 
One  can  never  forget  that  undulating  sweep  of 
life  that  passes  over  the  familiar  landscape  like  a 
slowly  gathering  storm.  The  men  and  women 
are  part  of  that  quiet  country  setting  beside  the 
Floss.  It  is  very  peaceful  outwardly,  but  none 
the  less  the  phantoms  of  destiny  are  mockingly 
preoccupied  with  this  drama  of  quiet  people  who 
cannot  vescape  the  storm.  Undoubtedly  "  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss  "  is  one  of  the  very  few  English 
novels  in  which  a  great  writer  has  written  down 
what  may  be  accepted  as  the  final  comment.  It 
closes  upon  youth  cut  off  in  the  very  moment  of 
understanding,  but  none  the  less  it  gives  utter- 
ance to  the  enigma  of  destiny  and  at  the  same 


Turgenev  199 

time  expresses  the  great  philosophy  of  human 
sympathy  in  the  face  of  Nature's  inscrutable 
indifference,  which  was  essentially  the  secret 
of  Turgenev's  pessimism. 

He  too,  apart  from  his  book   of  youth,  com- 
prised in  the  two   volumes   "  First   Love  "    and 
"  Spring  Torrents,"  has  written  a  single  volume 
which  in  a  very  deep  sense  may  be  accepted  as  his 
last  word  on  the  comedy  of  life.     In  "  Rudin  " 
and  "Liza"  he  expressed  his  point  of  view  in 
regard  to  the  national  emancipation  of  his  country. 
His  more  mature  standpoint  of  the  same  problem 
found  utterance  in  "  Virgin  Soil  "  and  in  "  Fathers 
and  Sons."     All  these  books  show  that  Turgenev's 
attitude  towards  the  Russian  people  was  in  all 
essentials  the  same  as  in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sports- 
man," the  book  which  had  revealed  the  moujik 
to  the  whole  civilised  world.     In  that  book  he  has 
demonstrated    his    intimate    knowledge    of    and 
sympathy  with  the  Russian  people  in  the  normal 
endurance  of  their  lot.     In  "  On  the  Eve"  he  was 
to  demonstrate  more   clearly  than  in  any  book 
before  or  after  his  want  of  faith  in  any  phase  of 
the  contemporary  struggle  for  freedom.     In  each 
one  of   these  books  something  of  the  inner  life 
of  those  two  Turgenevs  may  be  read,  but  in  one 
book,   "  The  Diary  of  a  Superfluous  Man,"   the 
introspective  side  of  Turgenev's  character  is  laid 
bare.     In  this,   we  have  what  is  almost  a  dis- 
illusioned   sequel    to    those    earlier    volumes    of 


200  Two  Russian  Reformers 

youth  which  are  actual  autobiography.  In  one 
sense,  indeed,  the  art  of  Turgenev  hovers  very 
close  to  the  story  of  his  soul,  the  actual  record  of 
which  was  burnt  in  the  garden  at  Bougival.  One 
remembers  his  advice  to  a  friend  to  write  down 
this  or  that  emotional  experience,  even  at  the 
moment  when  the  wound  most  festered.  And 
remembering  this,  one  understands  how  over  and 
over  again  in  apparently  objective  works  there 
intervenes  the  subtle  hint  of  personal  recollection. 
In  one  book  there  is  something  of  all  the  other 
works  of  Turgenev — his  youth,  his  political  aspira- 
tions, his  cosmopolitan  outlook,  his  mature  con- 
viction as  to  the  liberty  of  Russia.  All  these  are 
to  be  found  in  "  Smoke,"  and  with  them,  stamping 
the  book  with  finality,  the  undisguised  conviction 
of  Turgenev' s  kindly  but  unalterable  pessimism. 

Apart  altogether  from  the  political  dissatisfac- 
tion with  "  Smoke,"  critics  have  urged  against  it 
that  its  heroine  is  a  woman  of  the  world  instead 
of  an  ingenue.  It  is  claimed  that  through  this 
volte-face  of  Turgenev  much  of  the  charm  and 
freshness  of  his  individual  qualities  are  lost,  and 
that  he  who  so  persistently  declined  to  give  the 
youth  of  his  country  what  they  wanted,  has 
declined  in  this  instance  to  give  them  what  they 
expected.  None  the  less  in  "  Smoke  "  Turgenev 
gives  as  it  were  an  unconscious  resume  of  his 
youth's  first  love,  of  his  political  dreams,  of  the 
long  disillusion  of  maturity,  and  of  that  mournful 


Turgencv  201 

recognition  of  Nature's  aloofness  that  chilled  him 
as  a  boy  in  the  garden  of  Spasskoe. 

The  book  was  published  in  1867,  while  Turgenev 
was  breathing  the  cosmopolitan  atmosphere  of 
Baden-Baden.  Unlike  "  Fathers  and  Sons," 
"  Virgin  Soil,"  and  "  On  the  Eve,"  it  has  compara- 
tively little  political  importance  beyond  that  which 
attaches  to  caricature.  Unlike  Rudin,  its  hero 
ceases  utterly  to  believe  in  phrases ;  unlike 
Lavretsky,  he  ceases  to  believe  even  in  the  quiet 
immediate  duty  that  is  close  at  hand  to  every 
one  of  us.  Nor  is  its  hero  in  any  sense  similar 
to  the  central  figure  of  "  The  Diary  of  a  Super- 
fluous Man."  But  in  the  very  deepest  sense  it 
is  Turgenev  uttering,  without  the  faintest  wish  to 
conciliate,  the  very  essence  of  what  romance 
meant  to  him  whose  pulses  were  only  stirred  by 
the  frou-frou  of  a  mondaine's  skirts,  even  while  he 
worshipped  those  candid  and  clear-browed  heroines 
to  whom  his  genius  was  finally  dedicated.  More- 
over, it  is  in  this  book  also  that  the  twin  Turgenevs 
blend  more  inevitably  than  in  any  of  the  other 
novels.  Personal  and  analytic,  "  Smoke  "  is  at 
one  and  the  same  time  a  work  that  is  subjective 
almost  to  the  last  limit  of  introspection  and 
observantly  objective.  Never  before  or  after 
did  Turgenev  peer  more  uncompromisingly  into 
his  own  heart,  and  never  before  or  after  did  those 
sad  mocking  eyes  of  his  scrutinise  more  minutely 
the  young  patriots  of  Russia.     Not  for  nothing 


202  Two  Russian  Reformers 

had  he  been  watching  in  Baden  all  these  emanci- 
pated exiles  whose  rhetoric  was  to  galvanise  all 
Europe  through  the  sluggish  arteries  of  their 
native  Russia. 

In  other  novels  we  are  plunged  at  once  into  the 
atmosphere  of  Russia.     A  traveller  has  perhaps 
returned   after   a   long  absence,  and   easily,    im- 
perceptibly almost,  the  new  ideas  come  into  gentle 
contact   with    the   old.     But   in    "Smoke"    the 
point  d'apptii  is  the  Russian  tree  at  Baden-Baden 
around  which  the  gossip  of  libertv  mingles  easily 
and    naturally  with    the  gossip  of  gambling  and 
chiffons.     Litvinov  is  on  his  way  back  to  Russia, 
where  he  is  to  marry  his  young  cousin,  Tatyana, 
whom  he  has  known  from  childhood.     She  and 
her  aunt,  Kapitalina  Markovna,  are  to  meet  him 
in  Baden-Baden,  then  they  will  all  three  return 
to  Russia  and  all  will  be  well  with  them,  as  it 
seems.     It    is   almost   the   position   of   Sanin    at 
Frankfort  3^ears  and  years  before,  but  that  is  only 
on  the  surface.     Sanin  had  been  like  an  open  page 
awaiting  this  or  that  impression  ;    Litvinov  had 
already  experienced  the  impress  of  a  complex  and 
dangerous  personality. 

Years  before,  as  an  insignificant  young  man,  he 
had  made  the  acquaintance  of  an  impoverished 
but  aristocratic  family  named  Osini.  There  was 
a  daughter  named  Irina  Pavlona,  with  whom  the 
student  fell  hopelessly  in  love.  This  story  was 
as   commonplace   as   possible   so  far  as  outward 


Turgenev  203 

incidents  are  concerned.  Litvinov  neglected  his 
lectures  and  his  university  work  in  general  in 
order  to  visit  that  shabby  drawing-room  and  stare 
hopelessly  into  the  eyes  of  this  silent  girl.  Of 
course  he  considered  his  passion  that  of  the 
moth  for  the  star,  but  once,  when  he  was  about  to 
steal  out  of  the  room  without  saying  good-bye,  she 
threw  suddenly  all  the  magic  of  youth  and  tender- 
ness into  the  one  word  "  Stay."  To  the  young 
student  it  was  like  a  whisper  from  heaven,  a 
heaven  that  one  has  never  dared  to  plead  for, 
even  in  one's  dreams.  But  she  really  loved  him, 
and  of  course  she  would  be  faithful  as  young  girls 
are  faithful  to  first  love.  Still,  there  were  other 
things  for  a  girl  of  seventeen.  Her  dress,  for 
example,  the  one  that  poverty  compelled  her  to 
wear  day  after  day — would  he  love  her  in  that, 
always,  always  ?  She  wished  him  to  love  her 
even  in  that,  for  at  seventeen,  as  perhaps  at 
every  other  age,  that  seems  to  be  the  ultimate 
test  of  fidelity. 

But  at  seventeen  other  things  do  happen,  and 
in  this  particular  puff  of  smoke  the  something 
was  the  great  annual  ball  in  the  Hall  of  Nobility. 
By  some  means  or  other  Irina  must  go  to  this  ball. 
After  all,  she  had  a  white  frock,  and  the  poor 
student  himself  supplied  a  bunch  of  heliotrope. 

And  as  she  sets  out  on  her  first  triumph  Tur- 
genev makes  one  realise  everything — from  the 
little  thin  cloak,  much  too  short,  that  enfolded 

13 


204  Two  Russian  Reformers 

the  white  frock,  down  to  the  poor  student  staring 
after  the  decrepit  hired  coach  that  was  drawing 
her  out  of  his  hfe.  At  midnight  Litvinov  walked 
up  and  down  outside  the  windows  of  the  Hall  of 
Nobility  and  listened  to  the  mocking  music  of 
Strauss. 

The  next  day  as  usual  he  called  at  the  Osinin, 
but  found  no  one  at  home  except  Irina's  father, 
the  Prince,  who  informed  him  that  his  daughter 
had  a  headache — not  an  unnatural  thing  after  the 
excitement  of  her  first  ball.  But  Litvinov  divined 
that  everything  had  changed.  The  Prince  him- 
self wore  a  coat  instead  of  his  usual  old  dressing- 
gown.  Things,  it  seemed,  had  been  happening 
altogether  out  of  the  range  of  the  poor  student. 
Irina  had  had  an  immense  success,  and  a  cousin 
of  the  Princess  Osinin,  the  Chamberlain  Count 
Reisendach,  had  determined  to  adopt  her  and  to 
take  her  to  live  with  his  wife  and  himself  in  St. 
Petersburg.  A  month  later,  her  mother  took 
her  to  the  capital  and  placed  her  in  the  care  of 
the  Countess  Reisendach,  "  a  very  kind-hearted 
woman,  but  with  the  brain  of  a  hen  and  something 
of  a  hen's  exterior." 

Well,  all  that  was  long,  long  ago  ;  the  memory 
would  seldom  trouble  Litvinov,  who  had  arrived 
at  the  threshold  of  the  sure  sane  life  of  mutual 
sympathy  and  trust.  But  as  he  returned  to  his 
hotel  a  familiar  perfume  greeted  him,  and  he 
noticed  a  large  bunch  of  heliotrope  in  a  glass  of 


Turgencv  205 

water.  Dim  things  began  to  stir  in  his  memory, 
and  on  making  inquiries  he  was  told  that  a  very 
"grandly  dressed"  lady  had  brought  the  flowers. 
Already  their  perfume  troubled  in  an  inner  sense 
the  security  of  his  repose.  He  found  them  op- 
pressive in  his  bedroom  and  carried  the  bouquet 
into  the  next  room,  but  even  there  it  pursued  him, 
persisting  into  his  dreams,  wooing  him  back  with 
the  most  simple  and  the  most  subtle  of  all  the 
associations  of  the  sweet  first  love  of  youth. 
When  he  awoke  in  the  morning  he.  cried  out 
aloud,  "  Can  it  be  she  ?     It  can't  be  !  " 

And  that  very  day  he  meets  Irina  again.  She 
is  the  wife  of  a  General  Ratimov  now,  and  a  mon- 
daine  of  no  little  importance.  But  in  spite  of  this 
she  asks  Litvinov  to  forgive  her  for  the  desertion 
of  years  ago.  Imperceptibly  they  begin  again  as 
though  they  had  only  just  left  off.  With  the 
quiet  sympathy  of  long  experience  she  draws  from 
him  the  simple  outline  of  his  life  during  this  long 
interval.  But  just  as  he  is  going  away  she  reminds 
him  that  he  has  been  concealing  something  from 
her  all  the  time — "the  chief  thing"  :  why  has  he 
not  told  her  that  ?  Litvinov  blushes.  It  was 
such  a  little  thing  :  why  had  he  not  told  her  of  the 
young  girl  who  was  to  be  his  wife  ?  From  that 
instant  the  beautiful  worldly  woman  pervades 
him  like  a  perfume,  like  that  very  heliotrope 
that  had  so  swiftly  evoked  the  pain  of  old-time 
memories.     He  cannot  shake  off  the  renewal  of 


2o6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

the  old  influence.  Once  more  she  winds  herself 
around  his  life,  consuming  it  but  adding  no  life- 
blood  to  her  own.  Like  a  moth  fluttering  feebly 
away  from  the  light  that  lures  it,  he  struggles 
against  this  obsession  which  has  rendered  mean- 
ingless all  else  in  his  life.  For,  Irina  is  still  the 
same  wonderful  being,  who  in  the  little  white 
frock  and  short  cloak  was  swept  carelessly  away 
from  him  in  the  battered  old  coach  years  and 
years  ago.  Only  now  he  has  not  to  wander 
hopelessly  outside  the  windows  listening  to  the 
music  of  Strauss ;  that  is  not  for  him.  Now  he 
is  near  her,  and  in  the  zone  of  her  withering 
magnetism  he  forgets  the  rights  of  love  and  honour 
and  good  faith. 

The  outside  world  becomes  to  him  a  veritable 
nightmare  of  chatterers,  and  whether  he  is  visiting 
Irina's  circle  of  society  people  or  the  circle  of 
Russia's  young  liberators,  his  attitude  is  equally 
detached  and  preoccupied.  He  wants  this  one 
woman,  and  her  only  in  all  the  world.  He  watches 
her  in  the  atmosphere  of  pompous  dullness  with 
which  her  husband  has  surrounded  her,  and  like 
Sanin  and  the  hero  of  "  First  Love,"  notes  accu- 
rately, in  spite  of  his  almost  hypnotic  obsession, 
the  variations  of  absurdity  in  her  different  guests. 
And  when  he  leaves  her  he  allows  himself  to  be 
dragged  into  an  equally  repulsive  atmosphere  of 
idle  boastfulness,  which  he  analyses  as  one  who, 
even    in    a   dream,    preserves   extreme   lucidity. 


Turgenev  207 

Bambaev,  the  good-natured  enthusiast,  presents 
him  to  the  different  heroes  of  Russia,  in  each  one 
of  whom  he  reads  something  wonderful  and  new 
of  which  Litvinov  cannot  discern  the  shghtest 
trace.  It  is  all  the  mere  splashing  of  worn-out 
words  springing  from  nothing  and  leading  to 
nothing — far,  far  less  real  than  the  scent  of  helio- 
trope which  pursues  him  into  this  atmosphere  of 
smoke. 

Such  is  the  inner  life  of  Litvinov,  while  his 
acquaintances  chatter  confidently  around  the 
Russian  tree.  But  at  last  Tat^^ana  and  her 
aunt  arrive,  and  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him 
to  greet  them  now  that  this  sweet  restless  poison 
has  stolen  into  his  life.  The  girl  divines  in- 
stantly that  something  baneful  has  come  between 
them,  and  all  soothing  lies  are  frozen  upon  his  lips, 
so  truthfully  do  his  eyes  confess  the  secret  that 
has  shamed  his  honour.  It  is  horrible  to  watch 
her  suffering,  but  he  must  bear  that  too,  for 
now  it  seems  to  him  that  the  good,  homely  life 
that  he  had  planned  is  wholly  impossible.  And 
so,  like  the  hero  of  "  Sapho  "  and  the  heroes  of 
other  books  of  experience,  he  decides  to  stake 
his  life  on  the  faith  of  a  woman  who  has  already 
broken  faith  with  him ;  he  will  sacrifice  every- 
thing to  her — they  will  live  out  their  destiny 
together.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  the  scent  of 
heliotrope  stirred  in  his  very  blood  that  summer 
evening  at  Baden-Baden. 


2o8  Two  Russian  Reformers 

But  at  the  last  the  woman  hedges  in  the  lottery 
of  passion,  as  years  before  the  girl  had  hedged 
in  the  lottery  of  love.  After  all,  she  cannot 
abandon  everything  for  him  ;  she  cannot  give 
up  the  world,  because  she  is  what  she  is  only 
by  reason  of  the  world.  He  must  not  demand 
from  her  so  monstrous  a  sacrifice.  But  she  would 
like  him  to  live  near  her  and  see  her  every  day. 
He  has  become  necessary  to  her  again,  and  they 
two  will  love  each  other  wisely  and  discreetly. 
But  she  must  not  be  asked  to  burn  her  boats, 
for  she  is  not  strenuous  enough  for  that.  But 
Litvinov,  who  has  already  given  up  everything 
for  her,  is  not  prepared  for  this  discreet  sacrifice, 
and  so  he  tells  her  abruptly  that  all  is  over  be- 
tween them,  and  that  he  is  going  away  the  next 
morning. 

But  as  he  is  taking  his  seat  in  the  railway 
carriage,  some  one  whispers  his  name,  and,  turning 
round,  he  sees  Irina  wearing  her  maid's  shawl 
and  with  her  hair  dishevelled  as  he  had  never 
seen  it  before.  She  pleads  to  him  with  her  eyes, 
wooing  him  to  her  side,  promising  him  the  ultimate 
recesses  of  her  heart — promising,  promising,  pro- 
mising anything  and  everything  if  only  he  will 
stay  !  On  his  side  the  man  utters  no  word, 
but  points  to  the  seat  beside  him  with  a  gesture 
of  challenge.  Let  her  choose  ;  it  is  not  yet  too 
late.  And  Irina  understands.  For  a  moment 
she  hesitates,  and  then  the  train  whistle  sounds, 


Turgenev  209 

and  Litvinov  is  carried  out  of  her  life  just 
as,  years  before,  she  had  been  carried  out  of 
his. 

And  now  the  very  coma  of  exhaustion  has 
fallen  upon  Litvinov,  and  he  can  view  life  in 
perspective  as  one  who  has  already  lived.  Now 
he  can  judge  of  people,  as  one  for  whom  men 
and  women  have  already  become  phantoms.  All 
illusions  have  fallen  from  him  as  suddenly  withered 
leaves  from  a  stricken  tree.  All  the  old  phases 
of  experience  come  back  to  him  only  to  be  dis- 
missed as  foolish  dreams.  Every  battle-cry  of 
Russia's  liberators  seems  to  him  in  this  beaten 
moment  as  so  much  smoke.  Everywhere,  whether 
among  the  young  generals  in  Irina's  drawing- 
room  or  among  the  young  political  enthusiasts, 
he  had  experienced  nothing  but  idle  smoke. 
The  love  of  his  early  youth  had  been  but  smoke. 
The  honourable  love  of  his  mature  years,  that 
too  had  passed  away  from  him  in  smoke.  Passion, 
also,  had  been  tried  and  found  wanting,  and  in 
its  turn  had  coiled  away  from  him  in  films  of 
smoke. 

And  now  the  train  is  dashing  past  Rastadt 
and  Carlsruhe  ;  Bruchsal  has  been  left  far  behind. 
The  train  is  almost  at  Heidelberg ;  and  here, 
suddenly,  realities  force  themselves  upon  his 
morose  reverie. 

All  the  old  Baden  politicians  have  migrated  to 
Heidelberg,  and  come  rushing  up  to  the  railway 


210  Two  Russian  Reformers 

carriage  to  greet  the  sceptic  who  has  so  long 
refused  to  respond  to  the  fire  of  their  rhetoric. 
He  is  in  no  mood  to  respond  now,  and  so  they  rage 
against  him,  mouthing  their  futile  insults  across 
the  station  platform.  Never  was  the  famous  "A 
tout  venant  je  crache  "  of  Young  Russia  more 
vibrant,  but  Litvinov  answers  nothing.  All  this, 
too,  is  part  of  the  universal  smoke  of  life.  Let 
them  rage  and  fret  for  a  little  ;  they  too,  like 
so  many  smoke  eddies,  will  be  swept  into  the 
nothingness  of  distance.  As  Litvinov  is  whirled 
away  from  them  there  is  but  one  word  in  his 
heart — smoke.  All  these  feverish  destinies  are 
but  phantoms  of  smoke,  merely  obscuring  what 
they  imagine  themselves  to  reveal. 

A  little  later  he  comes  across  Bambaev,  the 
most  enthusiastic  and  the  most  foolish  of  all 
the  apostles  of  Russian  emancipation.  The  poor 
fellow  is  employed  in  an  obscure  corner  of  Russia 
as  a  menial.  He  has  turned  Frenchman  so  far 
as  his  name  is  concerned,  and  is  perpetually 
shouted  at  as  "  M'sieu  Roston."  Bambaev  tells 
his  old  friend  how  one  after  the  other  his  idols 
have  fallen  from  their  pedestals.  But  Bambaev, 
who  had  believed  in  each  of  them  in  turn, 
still  believes  in  Russia.  "  Yes,  yes,"  he  admits, 
**  hard  times  have  come  !  but  still  I  say  Russia. 
.  .  .  Ah  !  our  Russia  !  Only  look  at  those  two 
geese  :  why,  in  the  whole  of  Europe  there  is 
nothing  like  them  !  " 


Turgenev  211 

Litvinov  passes  on  once  more,  but  now  the 
old  coma  has  been  lifted  from  his  soul,  as  though 
from  him  alone  in  all  Russia  the  smoke  had 
risen,  leaving  the  air  around  him  clear  and  fresh. 
For,  though  every  hope  had  seemed  strangled 
in  his  heart,  there  remained  for  Litvinov  that 
merciful  renewal  which  Nature  permits  man  to 
share  with  the  other  manifestations  of  life.  And 
so  for  Litvinov  the  healing  time  comes  with 
the  sweet  certainty  of  spring.  His  heart  renews 
itself  as  the  seasons  themselves  are  renewed. 
For  a  little  while  yet  he  may  linger,  comforting 
himself  and  others  as  best  he  may  in  the  zone 
of  Nature's  remote  indifference.  The  old  poison 
at  least  has  fallen  away  from  him,  and  he  is  able 
to  return  sane  and  healed  to  the  faithful  pity  of 
the  young  girl  to  whom  he  has  been  so  faithless. 
She  at  least  in  this  world  of  smoke  is  beautiful 
and  rare  and  real.  But  as  for  the  rest,  with 
their  high  hopes  and  their  ambitions,  their  reme- 
dies and  their  revolts,  nothing  is  left  but  films  of 
smoke.  Even  Irina,  who  weighs  so  carefully 
the  scales  of  her  destiny  in  the  balance,  even 
Irina  does  not  grasp  the  small  practical  certainty 
to  which  she  had  sacrificed  the  lover  of  her  youth. 
In  one  of  the  most  exclusive  drawing-rooms 
in  St.  Petersburg  the  conversation  turns  upon 
Irina,  and  the  hostess  observes  :  "I  feel  so  sorry 
for  her  .  .  .  she  has  a  satirical  intellect  .  .  .  elle 
n'a  pas  ...  la  foi."     For  Irina  also  there  is  nothing. 


212  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Her  guess  at  happiness  has  been  as  meaningless 
as  all  the  rest.  Wisdom,  it  seemed,  was  itself 
only  smoke. 

Constantly  Turgenev  rebelled  against  the  over- 
whelming conclusions  which  none  the  less  pursued 
him  to  the  inner  depths  of  so  n^any  of  his  con- 
ceptions of  Russian  character.  So  far  as  his 
readers  are  concerned,  so  far  as  his  autobiography 
itself  is  concerned,  the  last  word  of  Ivan  Turgenev 
is  smoke.  The  very  monotony  of  motif  in  the 
novels  of  Turgenev,  which  is  the  monotony  of 
Nature  herself,  springs  from  this  profound  con- 
i  viction.  Turgenev  did  not  make  up  little  in- 
.  cidents  which  were  sooner  or  later  to  happen  in 
the  exciting  lives  of  clever  dummies.  Turgenev 
did  not  invent  table-talk  or  even  wonderful 
phrases  to  be  spoken  in  heroic  moments.  Tur- 
genev did  not  recognise  the  necessity  for 
"  curtains,"  or  even  for  handy  eccentric  people 
who  may  be  arranged  easily  enough  to  pat  any 
sequence  of  incidents  into  an  episode.  Of  all 
these  things  Turgenev  took  no  heed.  Life  was 
•  his  raw  material,  and  his  only  "  method  "  was 
that  strange  inner  vision  which  detected  instantly 
the  significant  and  translated  it  into  the  language 
\  of  art.  His  monofony  is  really  the  slow  monotony 
i  of  Nature,  who  at  least  plays  no  tricks  for  the 
further  bewilderment  of  her  progeny.  In  a  novel 
of  Turgenev  you  are  not  watching  a  kinetoscope, 
but  the  passing  of  the  seasons,   the  passing  of 


Turgenev  213 

generations,  the  sombre  passing  of  human  life 
itself. 

But  in  "  Smoke,"  his  book  of  final  experience, 
there  is  the  merciful  hint  of  escape  which  re- 
mained always  such  a  solace  to  the  Russian 
novelist.  To  the  suspicious  Turgenev,  the  man 
who  suspected  himself  and  others,  the  man  who 
suspected  life  and  death,  there  might  indeed 
appear  to  be  nothing  in  the  world  but  smoke 
surging  upward  from  the  foolish  holocaust  of 
hopes  and  fears  and  passions  and  dreams.  But 
that  other  Turgenev,  the  naive,  calm  Slav,  in- 
sensibly grasped  that  each  fretful  unit  was  but  a 
part  of  the  great  whole,  against  which  all  rancour 
could  avail  nothing.  That  Turgenev  believed  in 
the  final  deliverance  of  the  Russian  soul,  and  that 
Turgenev  expressed  the  faith  that  was  in  him, 
not  through  the  lips  of  men  but  through  the 
lips  of  his  Russian  women.  They,  these  quiet, 
steadfast  women,  asking  nothing  for  themselves, 
seeking  only  to  give,  they  at  least  detect  from 
the  holocaust  a  white  flame  slowly  piercing  its 
way  through  all  the  concealing  smoke.  For 
them  Turgenev  has  a  reverence  beyond  mere 
words  of  praise. 

One  after  the  other  they  come  to  him,  in  Baden, 
in  Paris,  in  Russia,  these  heroines  who  are  like 
no  others  in  any  other  literature,  whispering 
to  him  the  frozen  secrets  of  his  country.  In 
their  presence  the  cosmopolitan  analyst  of  human 


1 


214  Two  Russian  Reformers 

passion  becomes  once  more  a  veritable  giant  of 
the  steppes,  filled  with  one  knows  not  what  shy- 
reverence  before  these  exquisite  women,  who 
are  telling  him  what  Russia  means.  In  no  one 
of  his  books  has  a  heroine  failed  her  lover  in 
his  hour  of  need.  In  no  one  of  his  books  has 
it  been  the  woman  who  has  hesitated  on  the 
eve  of  action.  Everything  that  Turgenev  denied 
to  his  stricken  heroes  he  granted  abundantly  to 
these  blonde  and  candid  daughters  of  the  North, 
whose  very  love  was  inseparable  from  sacrifice. 
Even  "  Smoke,"  through  the  forgiving  tenderness 
of  Tatyana,  is  not  a  wholly  sombre  comment 
upon  "  the  doubtful  doom  of  human-kind." 

To  the  very  end  Turgenev  believed  in  the 
kindliness  of  human  nature  as  opposed  to  the 
unseeing  aloofness  of  Nature.  Almost  his  last 
articulate  words  were  :  **  Live  and  love  others, 
as  I  have  always  loved  them."  He  continued  to 
suffer  horribly,  and  at  one  of  the  Magny  dinners 
Daudet  stated  his  conviction  that  Turgenev  had 
gone  mad.  He  had  confided,  it  seems,  to  Charcot 
his  belief  that  he  was  "  pursued  by  Assyrian 
soldiers,  and  even  wished  to  hurl  at  him  a  frag- 
ment from  the  walls  of  Nineveh."  But  in  spite 
of  all  his  suffering  he  wrote  that  splendid  and 
pathetic  letter  to  Count  Tolstoy,  telling  him  to 
return  to  literature.  That  was  the  very  kernel 
and  anchorage  of  Ivan  Turgenev,  the  bond  of 
union  between  those  twin-selves  who  claimed  the 


Turgenev  215 

one  great  name.  All  his  life  his  compatriots 
had  been  carping  at  him  for  not  doing  what  he 
had  no  wish  to  do,  for  not  interpreting  what 
he  had  no  wish  to  interpret.  Turgenev  loved 
literature,  and  his  sacrifice  was  that  of  the  artist 
to  his  art.  That,  too,  he  claimed  came  from 
the  Source  of  all  things,  and  his  whole  life  was 
a  proud  self-dedication  to  its  service. 

Towards  the  very  end  his  sufferings  became  so 
unendurable  that  he  begged  Maupassant  to  give 
him  a  revolver  with  which  to  end  them.  At 
another  time  he  very  nearly  killed  Madame 
Viardot  by  throwing  an  inkstand  at  her,  so  enraged 
was  he  at  being  ceaselessly  watched.  He  died 
on  December  3,  1883.  "  For  two  days,"  wrote 
Madame  Viardot  to  an  old  friend  of  the  Baden 
days,  "  he  had  lost  consciousness.  He  suffered 
no  more,  his  life  ebbed  out  slowly,  and  after 
two  convulsions  he  drew  his  last  breath.  We 
were  all  beside  him.  He  became  handsome 
again,  as  he  had  been  always  in  the  past.  The 
first  day  after  his  death  he  had  still,  between 
his  eyebrows,  a  deep  wrinkle  which  had  been 
formed  under  the  pressure  of  convulsions  ;  on 
the  second  day  his  normal  expression  of  kindness 
reappeared  on  his  face.  One  almost  expected  to 
see  him  smile." 

Three  days  later  his  corpse  was  carried  to  the 
Gare  de  I'Est.     It  was  accompanied  by  the  greater 


2i6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

portion  of  the  Russian  colony  in  Paris;  and 
several  distinguished  Frenchmen,  among  whom 
were  Kenan  and  About,  paid  him  a  last  farewell 
in  the  name  of  literature  and  France.  Four  days 
later  in  the  Russian  capital  the  dead  man's 
prophecy  to  Polonski  was  fulfilled.  "  Wait  a 
little,"  he  had  said,  "  and  then  you  will  see  how 
they  will  treat  us."  His  funeral,  like  that  of 
his  enemy  Dostoievsky,  was  a  national  pageant 
of  mourning.  Turgenev,  w^ho  almost  all  his 
life  had  been  neglected  by  his  countrymen, 
was  followed  to  the  cemetery  by  two  hundred 
and  eighty-five  deputations,  and  an  enormous 
crowd.  He  had  returned  to  Russia  at  last  for 
good,  and,  very  fittingly,  he  was  buried  close 
to  the  great  Russian  critic,  Bielinski,  who  had 
understood  him  from  the  first. 


CHRONOLOGY 

1818.  Born  at  Orel. 

1835.  Entered  the  University  of  St.  Petersburg. 

1838.  Visited  Europe  for  the  first  time. 

1 841.  Returned  to  Russia. 

1843.  ^^st  Bielinski  and  Pauline  Garcia. 

1847.  Followed  the  Viardots  to  Europe. 

1848.  First  visit  to  France. 

1850.  Death  of  Madame  Turgenev. 

1852.  Published  "Annals  of  a  Sportsman." 

1856.  Left  Russia  to  live  in  Europe. 

1859.  Published  "Liza."    . 

1859.  Published   "  Oi?  the  Eve." 

i860,  Published  "Fathers  and  Sons." 


Turgenev  217 


1863.  First  appearance  at  Magny  dinners. 

1864.  Settled  in  Baden-Baden. 

1866.  Met  Flaubert. 

1867.  Published   "Smoke." 

1 87 1.  Commencement  of  Parisian  period. 

1877.  Published  "Virgin  Soil." 

1879.  Visit  to  Moscow  for  the  inauguration  of  the 
statue  of  Pushkin. 

1882.  Reconciled  with  Young  Russia. 

1883.  Died  in  Paris. 


HIS   WORKS 

'  The  Annals  of  a  Sportsman, 

•^udin. 

g  Liza. 

On  the  Eve. 
'-,  Fathers  and  Sons.  - 
T  Smoke. 
'  Virgin  Soil. 

Dream  Tales  and  Prose  Poems. 
V  The  Torrents  of  Spring. 
,    First  Love. 

The  Diary  of  a  Superfluous  Man. 

A  Lear  of  the  Steppes. 

Mumu,  etc. 

A  Desperate  Character,  etc. 

The  Jew,  etc. 


TOLSTOY 


219 


14 


CHAPTER    I 

SOME  years  ago  Merezhkovsky,  the  Russian 
Hellenist,  who  has  followed  so  many  of  his 
compatriots  into  the  pursuit  of  mysticism, 
demonstrated  that  Count  Leo  Tolstoy,  the  Chris- 
tian reformer,  was  and  had  always  been  essentially 
the  pagan,  as  opposed  to  tlie  Christian  genius 
of  Russia  that  was  incarnate  in  Dostoievsky. 
The  thesis  was  undoubtedly  startling  to  many, 
particularly  to  those  who  saw  in  Turgenev's 
great  rival  two  separate  and  distinct  Tolstoys — 
Tolstoy  the  man  and  artist,  and  Tolstoy  the 
ascetic  and  reformer.  In  reality  there  were  at 
no  time  any  such  two  Tolstoys  as  these  of 
the  popular  belief,  but,  in  a  quite  different 
sense  from  Ivan  Turgenev,  the  author  of  "  War 
and  Peace "  suggests  a  somewhat  significant 
duality.  This  duality  is  not  temperamental,  as  in 
the  case  of  Turgenev,  but  springs  rather  from 
the  external  pressure  of  environment  upon  the 
natural  ego.  N©  profound  suspicion  of  all 
things  haunted  Count  Tolstoy  from  the  be- 
ginning, a  suspicion  which  denied  the  utility  of 
searching  for  any  answer  at  all  to  the  enigma 

221 


322  Two  Russian  Reformers 

of  life.  What  haunted  Tolstoy  was  something 
quite  different,  and  in  reality  far  less  complex. 
It  was  the  certainty  of  one  endowed  with  a  quite 
pagan  capacity  for  enjoyment  that  the  feast  of 
life  was  too  brief  to  have  any  meaning  whatso- 
ever. But  there  must  be  some  meaning.  From 
the  very  beginning  Tolstoy  perceived  dimly  that 
his  pagan  conception  of  life  as  a  rich  feast  might 
be  utterly  wrong.  From  the  very  beginning  the 
Christian's  broodings  over  the  future  of  the  soul 
mingled  with  the  pagan's  certainty  as  to  the  future 
of  the  body.  Had  Merezhkovsky  approached 
Count  Tolstoy  from  a  slightly  different  standpoint, 
his  thesis  would  have  been  rather  different,  and 
possibly  more  profoundly  true.  He  would  have 
tracked  the  one  individuality  back  to  the  be- 
ginning of  articulate  youth,  and  he  would  have 
seen  at  all  times  under  all  the  pagan  robustness 
and  immense  gusto  for  life  "  the  hound  of  Heaven" 
in  pursuit  of  Count  Leo  Tolstoy. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  there  is  at  all  events  no  line 
of  demarcation  between  the  artist  and  the  reformer 
in  Tolstoy.  One  does  not  begin  at  the  point  where 
the  other  has  left  off.  That  is  only  a  myth  fabri- 
cated by  those  who  imagine  that  it  is  possible 
to  renounce  art  by  any  verbal  formula.  In  a 
sense,  however,  there  are  two  Tolstoys,  and  they, 
like  the  two  Turgenevs,  have  existed  from  the 
beginning  side  by  side.  The  one  has  been  un- 
reservedly  pagan,    seeing   in   the   flesh   its   own 


Tolstoy  223 

justification,  content  with  the  first  readings  of 
life,  grasping  at  happiness  through  pleasure, 
and — obtaining  it.  But  the  other  had  at  once 
that  melancholy  of  the  pagans  who  hated  so 
to  lose  the  power  of  enjoyment,  and,  blended  with 
it,  that  very  different  and  even  antagonistic 
melancholy  of  the  Christians  which  has  its  origin, 
not  in  the  triumph,  but  in  the  renunciation  of 
the  flesh.  Tolstoy  recognised  very  quickly  that 
no  one  is  strong  enough  to  tear  everything  from 
the  heart  of  life,  that  old  age  is  very  close  to 
youth,  and  behind  old  age  the  end  of  the  almost 
untasted  banquet.  But  he  could  not  accept 
this  after  the  stoical  fashion  of  the  ancients ; 
for  him  there  must  be  some  other  explanation. 
And  because  of  this  realised  antithesis  between 
the  immense  capacity  for  happiness  and  the 
pettiness  of  actual  life,  Tolstoy  sought,  even  in 
his  boyhood,  for  some  ruling  principle  of  ex- 
istence which  might  make  life  explicable  and 
hence  tolerable. 

This  search  for  an  explanation  does  not  begin 
with  the  moment  of  his  world-famous  conversion, 
but  insinuates  itself  in  some  phase  or  other, 
consciously  or  subconsciously,  through  all  his 
work.  In  the  midst  of  scenes  painted  with  an 
unequalled  relish  and  gusto  for  life  there  enters 
almost  always  a  seemingly  quite  alien  spirit, 
restless,  dissatisfied,  self-tormenting.  In  the  very 
childhood  of  Tolstoy  this  spirit  appears  to  have 


224  Two  Russian  Reformers 

asserted  itself.  Very  seldom  in  the  whole  litera- 
ture of  self-revelation  has  youth  been  portrayed 
with  such  matter-of-fact  frankness  as  in  "  Child- 
hood, Boyhood,  and  Youth,"  and  we  find  it 
constantly  in  those  pages. 

In  no  other  work  does  Tolstoy  write  with  a 
greater  delight  in  memory,  that  almost  physical 
delight  in  recapturing  physical  pleasures  which 
is   so   different    from    the    small    novelist's   self- 
conscious    desire    to    distribute    his    personality 
among  mankind.     With   Turgenev  the   recalling 
of  a  single  scent  or  sound  is  a  communication 
with  the  past,  as  though  some  ghost  had  whis- 
pered to  him  or  had  stolen  like  a  perfume  into 
his  room.     With  Tolstoy  the  effect  of  actuality 
is  produced  by  quite  different  means,  the  most 
important  of  which,  perhaps,  is  the  cumulative 
effect  of  minutely  realised  physical  details.     If 
Turgenev   may   be    described    as   a   gourmet   of 
life,  Tolstoy  may  be  described  as  a  gourmand. 
Turgenev   communicates   the   aroma   of   a   half- 
forgotten    scene ;     Tolstoy   lives   it    over    again, 
reproducing  the  actual  physical  delight  or  pain 
that   he   had   experienced   in   it.     The   loves   of 
Turgenev' s    youth    emerge    from    the    past    like 
dim  pervading  presences  assuming  the  masks  of 
life  ;   those  of  Tolstoy  come  to  us  as  real  people 
with  every  contour  accentuated. 

In   the   story   of   his   youth   Tolstoy   confides 
in  us  with  very  much  the  same  intimacy  that 


Tolstoy  225 

Turgenev  showed  in  "First  Love"  and  "Spring 
Torrents."  The  work  of  each  of  the  great  rivals 
betrays  the  most  microscopic  observation.  The 
work  of  each  betrays  the  habit,  formed  in  early 
childhood,  of  methodically  noting  objective  de- 
tails in  moments  of  excitement  or  danger.  "  You 
know,"  Turgenev  once  observed  to  Gorski,  "  that 
even  in  the  most  palpitating  moments  I  cannot 
cease  from  observing  other  people."  Tolstoy,  too, 
has  never  been  able  to  cease  from  observing  other 
people.  This  curiosit}^  of  the  intelligence  is 
stamped  upon  the  youth  of  each,  and  it  made 
them  realists  in  the  Russian  sense  long  before 
they  knew  the  meaning  of  the  word  "realism." 
There  exists  also,  in  both  these  records  of  youth, 
the  same  honesty  and  the  same  avoidance,  not 
only  of  arranging  oneself  before  the  world,  but 
of  even  seeking  to  prove  directly  or  indirectly 
that  one  is  neither  posing  to  oneself  nor  to  other 
people.  Different  in  so  many  things,  different  in 
their  conception  of  art  and  to  a  certain  extent 
in  their  conception  of  life,  the  two  great  Russian 
novelists  were  realists,  and  Tolstoy's  realism  in 
his  record  of  youth  is  by  far  the  more  discon- 
certing of  the  two.  For,  while  one  only  guesses 
here  and  there  about  the  life  of  Turgenev,  Tolstoy 
tells  everything.  Turgenev's  autobiography  is 
more  conspicuous  for  its  sudden  lapses  into 
reserve  than  for  anything  that  it  reveals  ;  Tolstoy 
searches  his  memory  so  that  he  may  omit  nothing. 


226  Two  Russian  Reformers 

It  is  as  though  each  had  thrown  into  the  story 
of  his  own  hfe  the  innermost  secret  of  his  art. 
Turgenev  allows  us  to  peer  into  his  soul  through 
revealing  here  and  there  something  significant ; 
; Tolstoy  discloses  his  inner  self  by  omitting  no 
detail  that  may  throw  light  upon  his  personality. 
Turgenev's  intimate  journal  was  burnt  at  his 
own  request ;  Tolstoy  has  been  publishing  the 
most  searching  records  of  his  spiritual  and  physical 
life  since  his  early  manhood.  And  yet  it  is  un- 
doubtedly the  infinitely  explanatory  Tolstoy  rather 
than  the  reserved  and  suspicious  Turgenev  who 
has  appeared  a  complex  and  perplexing  personality 
in  the  eyes  of  all  Europe.  This  is  at  least  partially 
due  to  the  fact  that  he,  unHke  Turgenev,  accen- 
tuated the  reahsm  which  is  the  peculiar  gift  of 
Russian  novelists. 

It  is  a  convention  among  the  great  majority  of 
Anglo-Saxon  writers  that  in  any  given  scene  of 
fiction  somebody  must  be  in  the  right  and  some- 
body else  in  the  wrong.  Whole  libraries  of  closely- 
printed  volumes  are  crowded  with  examples  of 
this  powerful  tradition.  Poor  people  have  been 
almost  always  in  the  wrong  in  English  fiction 
other  than  novels  with  a  purpose  ;  badly-dressed 
people  and  people  of  low  origin  have  been  in  the 
wrong  as  a  matter  of  course.  All  such  people, 
and  uncomfortable  people  of  every  kind,  are 
punished  more  or  less  judiciously  in  Enghsh  fiction. 
The  tradition  has  repeated  itself  down  the  cen-. 


Tolstoy  227 

turies  with  a  certain  sluggish  persistence ;  and 
even  the  French,  if  one  substitutes  the  word  propre 
for  the  "  right  "  or  "  wrong  "  of  English  censure, 
will  be  found  to  maintain  much  the  same  attitude. 
The  attitude,  incidentally,  is  never  more  con- 
spicuous than  when  an  attempt  is  made  to  sub- 
vert it.  Hugo,  for  example,  placing  Gavroche 
in  the  foreground,  saluted  him  and  presented 
him  as  being  for  once  in  the  "  right  "  and  the 
whole  world  of  the  bourgeoisie  in  the  "  wrong." 
But  this  conscious  change  of  perspective  has  no 
bearing  upon  the  unconscious  realisation  of  the 
Russian  novelists  that  nobody  is  either  in  the 
right  or  the  wrong,  a  conclusion  at  which  they 
had  arrived  long  before  that  much  exploited 
formula  of  Ibsen  that  there  is  no  formula  at  all 
for  the  guidance  of  mankind. 

Tolstoy's  realism  illustrates  this  with  amplitude 
of  detail  both  in  his  early  and  in  his  later  work. 
At  neither  stage  of  his  development  has  he  been 
censorious  after  the  manner  of  the  English,  or 
logical  in  his  judgments  of  humanity  after  the 
manner  of  the  French.  But  because  from  first 
to  last  he  has  been  groping  after  set  rules  of 
conduct  this  absence  of  the  spirit  of  condemnation 
is  certainly  perplexing. 

The  more  conspicuous  facts  in  regard  to  Count 
Tolstoy's  life  are  well  known  to  everybody.  All 
the  world  knows  that  he  was  born  in  1828  at 
Yasnaya  Polyana,  that  he  was  educated  at  Kazan 


228  Two  Russian  Reformers 

University,  and  that  he  served  in  the  Crimean  War 
from  1853  to  1856.  All  the  world  knows  that  he 
did  a  great  deal  for  the  organisation  of  peasant 
schools  in  the  country,  that  he  helped  to  dis- 
seminate cheap  publications  among  the  people, 
and  that  in  1891-92  he  organised  the  relief  of 
the  starving  moujiks  throughout  Middle  Russia. 
Furthermore,  it  is  well  known  that  he  renounced 
long  ago  all  exclusive  property  in  copyright,  land, 
and  money,  and  finally  that  in  1901  he  was  ex- 
communicated by  the  Russian  Synod.  Still  more 
familiar  than  any  one  of  these  bald  facts  is  his 
religious  crisis  of  1878-79,  from  which  date  the 
second  Tolstoy  is  supposed  to  have  sprung  into 
being. 

But  in  reality  no  divorce  exists  between  the 
so-called  two  Tolstoys,  the  one  who  interested 
the  world  by  his  art  up  to  1878,  and  the  one  who 
has  sought  to  reform  it  ever  since.  From  any 
standpoint  there  is  but  one  Tolstoy,  who  appears 
struggling,  hesitating,  profoundly  self-conscious 
in  ''  Youth,"  and  again  emancipated,  sure  of 
himself,  but  in  all  inner  qualities  essentially  the 
same  in  that  book  which  may  be  accepted  as  his 
book  of  final  experience,  "  Resurrection."  From 
the  beginning  he  is  infinitely  watchful  with  the 
same  minuteness,  both  of  introspection  and  of 
external  observation,  that  Turgenev  brings  to 
bear  upon  life,  only  the  author  of  *'  Smoke  "  never 
accumulates  details,  but  allows  a  significant  one 


Tolstoy  229 

to  stand  for  a  hundred.  With  his  rival  the  mass 
of  details  produces  an  impression  of  almost  physical 
reality,  and  his  method,  differing  as  it  does  from 
the  detachment  of  Turgenev,  infuses  something 
of  his  own  individuality  into  the  environment 
that  he  describes.  He  infuses,  for  example,  his 
own  zest  for  life  into  the  description  of  a  hunt,  a 
country  walk,  a  sledge-drive  through  the  Russian 
snow.  For  the  rest,  he  is  objective,  not  only  in 
his  descriptions  of  others,  but  also  in  those  of 
himself,  and  he  is  typically  a  Russian  realist  in  his  •} 
constitutional  repugnance  to  making  one  set  of 
people  wholly  in  the  right  and  another  set  wholly 
in  the  wrong.  Typically  Russian,  too,  is  his 
avoidance  of  the  very  suggestion  of  a  pedestal. 
From  childhood  he  had  searched  his  own  heart 
too  closety  for  any  belief  in  that,  and  from  the 
beginning  he  had  questioned  the  desires  of  that 
heart  as  though  the  Christian  that  prompted  him, 
as  from  outside,  was  already  commencing  to  tear 
at  his  pagan  arrogance  of  life. 

In  his  record  of  youth  he  recalls  his  childish 
affection  for  Seriga,  which  reminds  one  of  David 
Copperfield's  admiration  for  Steerforth.  Seriga, 
too,  is  something  of  a  bully,  and  ill-treats  the  little 
Illinka  exactly  as  Steerforth  would  have  ill-treated 
him.  Tolstoy  remembers  with  minute  accuracy 
his  own  inner  feelings  during  this  typical  incident 
of  childhood.  "  Where,"  he  asks,  "  was  the 
compassionate  feeling  which  had  formerly  made 


230  Two  Russian  Reformers 

me  sob  at  the  sight  of  a  young  raven  thrown  out 
of  its  nest,  or  of  a  little  dog  which  was  to  be 
thrown  over  a  hedge,  or  of  a  hen  caught  by  the 
cook  in  order  to  be  roasted  for  dinner  ?  "  The 
torture  of  trifles  which  is  so  significant  in  child- 
hood was  intense  in  the  childhood  of  Tolstoy. 
His  father  rebukes  him  for  his  clumsiness  in  danc- 
ing the  Mazurka,  and  it  seems  to  him  that  the 
whole  li2:ht  of  his  life  has  suddenlv  gone  out. 
"  Mv  Lord  !  "  he  cries,  "  why  dost  thou  punish 
me  so  awfulh'  ?  " 

Even  at  his  mother's  funeral  this  hero,  who 
was  at  all  events  partially  the  exact  counterpart 
of  Tolstoy  himself,  is  at  once  introspective  and 
alert  to  ever\'  detail  of  the  scene  around  him. 
**  I  wept  during  the  Divine  Ser\'ice,"  he  wTites, 
"  made  the  sign  of  the  Cross  and  knelt  out  of 
decorum  ;  but  I  did  not  pray  from  the  bottom 
of  my  heart,  and  was  phlegmatic.  I  was  anxious 
about  my  new  coat,  which  was  too  tight  under  my 
arms  ;  thought  about  not  dirtying  my  trousers 
when  I  knelt,  and  busied  myself  stealthily  about 
observing  those  present."  And  he  goes  on  to 
examine  everybody  around  him,  weighing  as  it 
were  the  individualitv  of  each  soul  throusih  all 
externals  just  as  ruthlessly  as  he  had  pierced 
through  his  oww  outer  mask.  Child  as  he  was, 
he  realised  the  vanity  which  is  so  often  subtly 
intermingled  with  grief,  so  that  the  mourner  is 
unconsciously   impelled   to   pose,    to   assume   an 


Tolstoy  231 

attitude.  The  old  housekeeper  had  none  of  this 
vanity,  and  in  spite  of  all  her  sorrow  for  her  dead 
mistress  she  wrangled  just  as  usual  over  the 
raids  on  her  store-room  for  rice  and  sugar  :  "  Grief 
had  taken  such  a  hold  of  her  that  she  did  not  find 
it  necessary  to  conceal  that  she  was  nevertheless 
able  to  attend  to  everyday  matters  ;  she  would 
have  even  been  quite  unable  to  understand  how 
such  a  strange  idea  as  her  being  unable  to  do  so 
could  have  come  into  anybody's  mind." 

Even  then  the  two  sides  of  Tolstoy's  nature, 
each  springing  from  the  same  concentration  of 
analysis,   were   beginning   to   assert    themselves. 
He  who  could  examine  others  with  so  arrogant  \ 
a  scrutiny  was  impelled  inevitably  to  turn  his 
gaze  inward  upon  the  mysteries  of  his  own  heart.   | 
His  very  vitality  and  passion  for  life  made  him  i 
mournfully  conscious,   as   it   made   the   ancients  / 
mournfully  conscious,  that  it  could  not  last,  that 
old  age  would  come,  that  at  the  very  best  one 
could  enjoy  only  for  a  little  while.     Turgenev's 
pessimism  sprang  from  an  inner  conviction  that 
Nature    was    profoundly    indifferent    to    human 
prayers  and  human  tears  ;    Tolstoy's  pessimism 
sprang  from  the  realisation  that  this  sweet  ample 
life   which   he   enjoyed   must   inevitably   be   cut 
short.     Turgenev  sought  for  no  consolation,  and 
detected  mitigation  for  the  oppression  of  life  only 
in    the    natural    kindliness    of    the   human    race. 
Tolstoy,  on  the  other  hand,  permeated  as  he  was 


232  Two  Russian  Reformers 

by  the  love  of  life,  was,  perhaps  by  reason  of  the 
very  satiety  of  sensation,  haunted  by  the  sense 
of  approaching  loss.  Unlike  Turgenev,  he  sought 
for  consolation  not  only  in  the  period  following 
1878,  but  in  his  very  earhest  work.  He  sought  it, 
indeed,  in  that  narrative  which,  in  many  respects 
actual  autobiography  as  it  is,  ends  with  the 
imaginary  death  of  his  mother. 

As  his  youth  developed,  the  contrast  between 
I  the  outward  watchfulness  of  observation  due  to 
/  his  interest  in  life  and  the  inner  absorption  of 
/  introspection  due  to  the  sense  of  life's  littleness  in 
the  face  of  the  unknown  deepened.  This  contrast 
is  well  illustrated  by  an  insignificant  incident 
which  took  place  on  a  journey  to  town  at  the 
beginning  of  that  "  Boyhood "  which  is  the 
second  chapter  of  Tolstoy's  youth.  He  had  had 
no  time  to  say  his  prayers  at  the  inn,  and  so  he 
determined  to  say  them  in  the  coach  :  "  But 
thousands  of  different  things  divert  my  attention, 
and  I  absently  repeat  the  same  words  of  the 
prayer  several  times  running."  As  that  journey 
continues,  it  becomes  symbolic  of  the  whole  life 
of  Count  Tolstoy.  Already  the  seer  is  struggling 
with  the  Russian  child  of  the  Renaissance.  He 
wishes  to  pray,  but  on  all  sides  Nature  calls  to  him 
to  see  with  his  own  eyes  that  the  world  is  good. 
His  lips  murmur,  but  upon  that  extraordinary 
retina  of  his  a  thousand  impressions  are  stamping 
themselves.     Nothing  escapes  him  and  everything 


Tolstoy  233 

lives  again  under  this  vitalising  touch  of  memory. 
Horses,  post-boys,  peasants,  young  girls  and 
old  women,  all  the  sounds  of  the  road  and  the 
fields  and  the  villages  are  humming  around  the 
boy  as  he  prays  in  the  rattling  old  coach.  At 
first  glance  Turgenev's  treatment  seems  almost 
pale  and  lifeless  beside  this  infinite  activity  of 
observation.  Turgenev,  perhaps  equally  minute 
in  observation,  selected  only  a  few  significant 
details,  while  from  the  very  beginning  Tolstoy's 
ample  canvases  swarm  with  clustering  life.  He 
could  never  be  otherwise.  He  was  so  intensely 
interested  in  the  outside  world  that  he  could  not 
avoid  being  interesting,  and  this  quality  survived 
his  famous  renunciation  of  art.  For  Tolstoy  at 
eighty-two  is  much  as  was  that  little  boy  in  the 
family  coach  who,  in  spite  of  his  prayers,  could  not 
help  seeing  the  wonders  of  life  with  an  artist's 
vision. 

How  that  boy  revelled  in  every  vivid  sensa- 
tion, every  fresh  experience,  every  plunge  into 
the  riot  of  happiness !  But  only  too  often, 
even  at  that  early  period,  the  antagonistic  habit 
of  introspection  would  strike  at  him,  chilling 
the  flush  of  his  youth.  In  the  midst  of  a  storm 
in  which  he  detected  **  the  wrath  of  God,"  a 
dirty  ragged  beggar  approached  the  coach  and 
asked  for  alms.  "  I  cannot  describe,"  he  writes, 
"  the  feeling  of  cold  dread  which  filled  my  heart 
at  that  minute.     A  shiver  ran  through  my  whole 


234  Two  Russian  Reformers 

body,  while  my  eyes,  stupefied  with  fear,  were 
directed  towards  the  beggar.  ..."  This  is  ab- 
solutely typical  of  the  whole  attitude  of  Tolstoy 
towards  life,  "  the  cold  dread,"  experienced  even 
in  childhood,  chilling  and  withering  suddenly 
the  warm  joy  of  life.  Already  he  divines  the 
"  wrath  of  God,"  and  he  knows  that  in  all  the 
multitudinous  world  of  life  there  is  no  nook  or 
crevice  in  which  he  may  hide  from  that.  And 
this  knowledge,  blending  with  a  certain  sympathy 
of  youth — far  less  spontaneous  than  that  of 
Turgenev — breaks  through  the  terrible  egotism 
of  the  boy,  and  he  becomes  conscious  of  the 
existence  of  other  people  as  entities  in  themselves 
and  detached  from  their  relations  with  his  family 
and  himself. 

Passion  comes  to  him  in  his  early  youth,  just 
as  it  comes  to  Turgenev ;  but  whereas  Turgenev 
recaptures  those  early  moments  in  which  his 
pulse  first  quickened  at  the  sound  of  a  serf  girl's 
whisper  as  though  such  moments  were  among 
his  most  exquisite  memories,  Tolstoy  relates 
his  boyish  attraction  towards  Masha  with  as 
much  matter-of-fact  precision  of  detail  as  he 
gives  to  any  other  incident  in  that  almost  too 
clearly  visualised  youth.  So,  too,  in  relating 
Masha's  courtship  by  Bassily,  he  gives  us  a  picture 
infinitely  more  complete  than  that  fugitive  sketch  , 
of  a  peasant's  wooing  in  "  The  Annals  of  a  Sports- 
man,"   or    the    somewhat    similar    courtship    in 


Tolstoy  237 

"  Mumu."  Tolstoy  raises  the  curtain  and  shows 
us  the  maidservants'  room,  just  as  on  other 
occasions  he  raises  the  curtain  and  ushers  us 
into  this  or  that  salon.  He  is  as  unconscious 
of  Anglo-Saxon  prudery  as  he  is  of  French  pruri- 
ency. But  his  eye  fastens  upon  every  detail, 
and  he  writes  everything  down,  just  because  it 
is  there.  His  manner  of  realism  was  never  to 
alter,  never  to  become  modified.  It  was  the 
same  in  dealing  with  the  intricate  manoeuvres 
of  vast  masses  of  troops  over  great  spaces  as  it 
was  when  outlining  the  details  of  the  serf  girl's 
room  :  "  There  is  the  lejanka,  on  which  stand 
an  iron,  a  pasteboard  doll  with  a  broken  nose, 
a  slop  pail,  a  basin  ;  there  is  the  window,  on 
which  I  can  see  a  small  piece  of  black  wax,  a 
skein  of  silk,  a  green  cucumber,  half  of  which 
has  been  bitten  off,  and  an  old  pasteboard  box 
which  once  contained  bonbons ;  there  is  the 
large  red  table  on  which  lies  some  unfinished 
work,  pinned  by  one  end  to  a  bright  pincushion, 
covered  with  cotton  print ;  and  at  it  Masha  sits 
in  her  favourite  pink  gingham  gown  and  in  a 
blue  kerchief  which  especially  attracts  my  atten- 
tion." Turgenev's  own  vision  was  microscopic, 
but  he  shrank  from  such  merciless  inspections 
as  this. 

In  dealing  with  human  beings  Tolstoy's  realism 
is  equally  minute.  He  describes  a  young  girl 
point    by    point    until    we    realise   her   physical 

15 


23S  Two  Russian  Reformers 

appearance  as  though  she  were  sitting  beside 
us  in  a  drawing-room.  The  companions  of 
Turgenev's  boyhood  trouble  us  Hke  sombre 
enigmas  of  memor\^  compared  with  the  robust 
reahties  of  Katinka  and  Luvkatka.  The  loves 
of  Turgenev  rustle  past  us  in  a  twilight  that 
grows  perceptibly  fainter,  but  which  remains 
permeated  by  the  swift  passing  of  mystery  and 
beauty.  The  heroines  of  Tolstoy's  boyhood  can 
be  seen  exactly  as  they  appear  to  a  clear-eyed 
boy  who  sees  them  very  much  as  they  see  each 
other.  And  in  dealing  with  the  undercurrents 
of  intrigue  the  methods  of  the  two  great  Russian 
realists  are  equally  antipathetic.  With  Turgenev 
one  notices  the  raising  of  an  eyebrow,  a  chance 
word  is  overheard  during  an  unexpected  lull 
in  general  conversation,  the  low  laugh  of  a  girl 
stabs  at  some  forgotten  one  through  the  darkness, 
a  commonplace  question  is  evaded,  but  a  whole 
world  of  subterranean  cross-currents  has  been 
revealed  for  the  instant,  only  to  be  concealed 
immediately  again.  But  for  Tolstoy  nothing 
can  remain  hidden  if  one  has  found  it  out.  There 
are  no  open  secrets  for  him  ;  for  him  there  is 
no  troubling  scent  of  corruption,  scarcely  per- 
ceptible among  so  many  antagonistic  sensations 
of  what  seems  to  be  the  most  ordinary  Ufe.  With 
Tolstoy  the  concealed  nerve  must  be  laid  bare. 
"  That  is  what  goes  on  underneath,"  he  seems 
to  say.     "  I  have  probed  into  it,  and  it  is  just 


Tolstoy  239 

like  that."  But,  in  spite  of  this  extraordinary 
power  of  analysis,  Tolstoy  has  never  been  cen- 
sorious in  the  English  manner,  not  even  in  his 
most  intense  moments  of  religious  conviction. 

Strange  processes  were  already  at  work  in  the 
boy's  heart.  Without  realising  it  in  the  least 
he  had  already  become  a  moralist,  from  time 
to  time,  at  all  events,  deeply  preoccupied  with 
the  secrets  of  his  own  and  other  people's  hearts. 
But  this  youthful  introspection  is  naive  and 
healthy  as  compared,  for  example,  with  that 
of  Turgenev's  "  Superfluous  Man."  Tolstoy  nar- 
rates the  intimate  details  of  his  own  wounded 
self-love  with  an  incongruous  gusto  which  seems 
to  be  inseparable  from  his  large  truthfulness. 
No  mournful  irony  veils  the  rage  and  hate  of 
youth,  beating  its  already  bruised  wings  against 
the  stupid,  unrealised  lid  of  life.  He  registers 
everything — the  meditation  of  inertia,  the  need 
for  action,  moralising  broodings,  cravings  to  make 
the  whole  world  better — and  with  it  all  the 
violent  seething,  the  momentary  madness  of 
the  Slav  that  so  soon  subsides  into  coma. 

But  he  is  as  conscious  of  attitudes,  his  own 
and  other  people's,  as  the  least  objective  of 
writers.  In  his  castles  in  the  air,  his  is  always 
the  grand  role,  and  he  has  risen  to  the  idea  of 
unselfishness,  the  idea  of  sacrificing  his  immediate 
snatch  at  life  to  the  well-being  of  others.  That 
was  much  in  the  development  of  this  boy,  for  he 


240  Two  Russian  Reformers 

lived  in  an  atmosphere  in  which  such  sacrifices 
were  scarcely  taken  seriously.  In  Turgenev's 
"  First  Love  "  one  guesses  dimly  at  the  real  nature 
of  the  silent,  reserved  father,  whose  inner  life  is 
becoming  more  and  more  complex.  One  suspects 
him.  His  influence  permeates  the  atmosphere 
around  us,  as  though  we  had  unconsciously  ap- 
proached a  suave  but  menacing  individuality. 
And  at  last,  when  the  boy  waits  in  the  garden 
to  kill  his  rival,  we  know  that  he  is  waiting  to 
kill  his  own  father.  There  is  no  surprise,  no 
"  curtain  "  in  the  sense  of  the  little  tricks  of  the 
well-made  feuilleton.  None  the  less  this  intrigue 
of  a  father  with  the  young  girl  whom  the  son 
loves  is  veiled  by  the  decorous  secrecy  of  art. 
But  in  his  record  of  youth  Tolstoy  writes  down 
the  little  intrigues  of  which  his  supposed  father 
is  the  central  figure  with  a  matter-of-courseness 
that  strips  them  of  the  last  nuance  of  mystery. 
And,  curiously  enough,  his  very  openness  arrives 
at  the  same  effect  that  with  us  is  reached  by  our 
normal  Anglo-Saxon  method  of  suppression.  If 
you  tell  everything  to  everybody,  nobody  need 
blush.  All  his  hfe  Tolstoy  has  been  tehing 
almost  everything,  at  first  subconsciously,  but 
afterwards,  most  certainly,  self-consciously.  The 
same  tendency  to  tear  down  all  mystery,  the 
Lucian-like  insistence  upon  plucking  off  all  pad- 
ding from  human  souls,  is  at  work  in  the  story 
of  Tolstoy's  youth,  just  as  it  is  at  work  in  that 


Tolstoy  241 

terrible  indictment  of  human  nature,  the  "Kreut- 
zer  Sonata."  In  these  pages  you  are  not  studying 
a  young  man  who  may  become  anything  ;  you 
are  studying  Count  Tolstoy,  the  representative 
of  the  moral  consciousness  of  Europe. 

Already  introspection  was  driving  him  to 
search  for  some  actual  escape  from  the  trammels 
of  the  flesh.  Already  he  was  preoccupied  by 
those  abstract  questions,  the  destiny  of  humanity 
and  the  survival  of  the  soul.  Already,  too,  he 
was  perturbed  by  the  idea  of  death,  by  the  con- 
stantly returning  remembrance  that  he  can  retain 
nothing  of  all  these  sweets  of  life  in  spite  of 
all  his  pagan  gluttony  for  physical  enjoyment. 
The  boy  was  already,  in  embryo  as  it  were,  the 
world-famed  judge  of  humanity  who  commenced 
by  condemning  himself. 

At  this  period,  however,  he  fought  against 
reflection  as  against  the  terror  by  which  the 
joy  of  living  is  cowed.  But  the  idea  of  Eternity 
persisted,  and  it  was  only  his  passion  for  external 
life  that  saved  him  then,  as  always,  from  mor- 
bidness. For,  in  this  genuine  reproduction  of 
the  emotions  and  illusions  of  youth,  that  pre- 
occupation with  death,  which  so  often  intrudes 
itself  in  Tolstoy's  mature  work,  is  over  and 
over  again  expressed.  The  deaths  of  the  mother 
and  grandmother  are  watched  with  a  minute 
intentness  in  which  we  may  discern  the  germ,  at 
least,   of   that   extraordinary   study   of   the   end. 


243  Two  Russian  Reformers 

"The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch."  And  this  idea  of 
the  end  pursues  the  youth  of  Tolstoy,  thrusting 
itself  between  him  and  those  physical  pleasures 
which  he  realised  more  fully  perhaps  than  any 
other  artist  who  has  at  all  revealed  his  intimate 
secrets  to  the  world.  But  even  in  the  difficult 
moments  of  first  love  he  is  saved  from  morbidness 
by  the  healthy  pagan  side  of  his  nature,  which 
insistently  forces  the  brooding  gaze  outward. 
When  Masha  marries  her  fellow-servant,  Vassilie, 
Irteniev  is  unperturbed :  "  When  the  newly- 
married  couple  came  back  to  thank  papa,  bringing 
in  a  tray  with  various  sweets  upon  it,  and  when 
Masha  in  a  cap  with  blue  ribbons  thanks  all 
of  us,  kissing  each  on  his  or  her  shoulder,  I  smell 
the  scent  of  rose-oil  pomatum  which  pervades 
her,  but  do  not  experience  the  least  agitation." 
How  alien  is  this  matter-of-fact  comment  upon 
a  worn-out  dream  from  Turgenev's  preservation 
of  the  fading  aroma  of  each  lost,  half-remembered 
passion ! 

The  idea  of  self-improvement,  of  self-perfecting, 
is  already  stirring  within  him,  and  Irteniev  has 
commenced  to  detect  in  self-love  the  veritable 
core  of  evil.  His  intimate  friend,  however,  admits 
that  he  has  one  very  rare  quality — frankness. 
Then,  as  always,  he  wished  to  utter  the  absolute 
truth  in  regard  to  the  inner  as  well  as  the  outer 
world.  And  already  the  need  of  confession,  the 
need  of  reveaUng  everything,  including  what  is 


Tolstoy  243 

habitually  hidden  even  from  oneself,  is  experienced, 
so  that  in  this  record  of  Tolstoy's  youth  there  is 
the  germ-idea  of  that  more  famous  confession 
which  years  afterwards  was  to  take  the  world  by 
storm. 

Interwoven  with  all  these  tentative  experiments 
in  perfection  the  boy  experienced  a  dissatisfaction 
with  his  physical  appearance  which  was  wholly 
pagan  in  its  desire  for  beauty  :  "  There  was 
nothing  expressive  in  it — the  most  ordinary,  gross, 
and  unsightly  features  ;  and  my  small  grey  eyes, 
especially  when  I  looked  into  the  looking-glass, 
seemed  rather  stupid  than  clever :  there  was 
nothing  manly  about  me  ;  though  I  was  not  short 
of  stature,  and  very  strong  for  my  age,  all  my 
features  were  soft,  flat  and  meaningless."  Very 
different  is  this  savage  self-condemnation — the 
self-condemnation  of  the  Christian,  and  yet  spring- 
ing from  a  pagan  origin — from  that  melancholy 
irony  with  which  Turgenev  looked  back  upon  the 
"  softness  "  of  Sanin. 

In  recurring  spasms  of  mental  agitation  the 
desire  for  purification  returned  to  Irteniev,  and 
he  desired  that  his  life  might  be  saved  from  the 
endless  entanglements  that  hung  octopus-like  in 
the  atmosphere  around  him.  Already  he  was 
aiming  at  that  simplification,  the  desire  for  which 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  Russian  character,  and 
which,  in  "  The  Three  Deaths,"  **  The  Cossacks," 
and  so  many  other  works,  is  the  foundation  of  the 


244  Two  Russian  Reformers 

early  as  well  as  of  the  later  teaching  of  Count 
Tolstoy.  J  It  was  no  sudden  reformation  that 
changed  him.  He  was  not  an  artist  for  so  many 
years,  and  then  a  reformer  for  so  many  more. 
His  development  was  neither  a  conjuring  trick 
of  genius  nor  a  flash  of  mental  aberration,  but  a 
quite  normal  and  rational  progression  upon  lines 
that  are  clearly  laid  down  in  this  personal  record 
of  youth. 

For  here,  on  the  very  threshold  of  life,  the  two 

Tolstoys   vie   with   one   another   in   a   far   more 

obvious  contest  than  that  of  the  two  Turgenevs. 

The  one  Tolstoy  gloried  in  the  pride  of  life,  his 

pulses    quivering    with    joyous    contentment    in 

the  hie  et  nunc  of  his  moment.     But  the  other 

Tolstoy,  penetrated  by  that  melancholy  of  the 

ancients  to  which  was  added  the  later  fear  of  the 

Christians,  knew  well  that  this  pride  of  strength 

was  as  nothing  before  the  menace  of  the  years. 

This   conflict    did   not    cease   with   the   so-called 

reformation  of  Count  Tolstoy,  and  is  to  be  found 

in  the  works  that  followed  it  just  as  clearly  as  in 

those  which  preceded  it.     We  find  it  engraved  on 

the  pages  of  "Youth,"  and  we  find  it  surviving 

in  the  pages  of  "  Resurrection."     Tolstoy  himself 

divined  that  this  central  antagonism  was  essential 

to  his  nature  and  would  persist  while  life  itself 

persisted.    He  knew — none  better — that  there  is  no 

divorce  between  one  period  and  another,  and  that 

age  can  only  make  pallid  the  old  conflicts  of  youth, 


Tolstoy  245 

but  neither  ends  them  nor  even  whole-heartedly 
passes  judgment  upon  them.  "  Let  not  any  one 
reproach  me,"  he  writes,  "  saying  that  the  illusions 
of  my  youth  are  as  childish  as  were  those  of  my 
childhood  and  of  my  boyhood.  I  am  convinced 
that  if  it  be  my  fate  to  live  to  a  great  age,  and  if 
my  narrative  keep  up  to  my  age,  I  shall  be  found, 
when  I  am  an  old  man,  to  have  just  the  same 
impossible  childish  illusions  as  at  present."  Youth, 
indeed,  was  already  engaged  with  those  eternal 
problems  to  which  the  whole  literary  life  of  Count 
Tolstoy,  and  not  one  portion  of  it,  may  be  said  to 
have  been  devoted  :  "  This  voice  of  a  repentance 
and  of  passionate  longing  for  perfection  was  a 
feeling  that  predominated  in  my  mind  at  that 
period  of  my  development,  and  it  was  the  root 
of  my  new  opinions  concerning  myself,  other 
people,  and  all  creation." 

But  Tolstoy  cannot  as  yet  continue  very  long 
in  this  mood  of  humility.  His  pride  of  life  throbs 
in  every  vein  of  his  body,  calling  him  outward, 
wooing  him  to  all  the  natural  delights  of  open- 
air  life,  wooing  him  to  view  and  to  taste  the 
wonders  of  the  world.  Long  afterwards  he  was 
to  write  with  the  desire  to  convince,  to  instruct, 
to  elaborate  a  thesis.  But  in  the  very  midst  of 
it  he  would  become  absorbed  by  some  external 
detail,  the  old  thrill  of  life  would  return  to  him, 
and,  instead  of  substantiating  a  doctrine,  he  would 
insensibly  revert  to  the  study  of  the  men  and 

i 


246  Two  Russian  Reformers 

women  of  external  life.  Passionately  interested 
in  the  outer  world,  forced  into  introspection 
through  the  certainty  that  external  existence 
must  fail  him  in  the  end,  Tolstoy,  boy  and  man, 
was  essentially  a  sybarite  of  life,  who  became  an 
ascetic  only  because  he  read,  haltingly  at  first  and 
then  with  terrible  lucidity,  the  handwriting  on 
the  wall  from  which  others  averted  their  eyes. 

But  as  for  the  inner  suspicion  of  life,  masked 
only  by  profound  irony,  the  mental  attitude  of 
Ivan  Turgenev,  Tolstoy  knew  nothing  of  that. 
If  he  grew  weary  of  one  set  of  external  pleasures, 
there  were  many  others  still  untried,  and  if  one 
set  of  convictions  failed  him  he  would  grope  his 
way  after  more  enduring  ones.  It  is  as  though 
from  the  very  beginning  he  were  balanced  between 
two  forces — not  necessarily  either  good  or  evil  in 
themselves — the  one  centripetal  and  the  other 
centrifugal.  Of  that  final  negation  of  his  rival, 
modified  only  by  belief  in  the  general  goodness  of 
poor  humanity,  Tolstoy  had  not  at  any  time  the 
faintest  comprehension.  Turgenev  himself  has  said 
that  Tolstoy's  great  loss  was  that  he  was  without 
spiritual  freedom.  At  all  events  he  could  at  no 
time  have  contented  himself  with  the  "  Smoke  " 
theory  of  human  destiny.  Life  was  too  interesting 
for  that,  and  if  the  oppression  of  coming  death 
made  life  seem  meaningless,  then  one  must  either 
find  the  solace  of  some  meaning  or  else  die  from 
very  despair. 


Tolstoy  247 

But  long  before  that  conscious  search  after 
some  meaning,  Tolstoy  had  commenced  to  grope 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  good  resolutions 
dissolved  very  quickly  into  emptiness.  "Thus," 
he  notes  in  recording  one  such  psychical  experi- 
ence of  boyhood,  "  my  fine  feelings  all  turned  to 
smoke.  When  I  began  to  dress  for  church  in 
order  to  go  and  receive  the  Sacrament  with  all 
the  others,  I  found  that  my  suit  of  clothes  had 
not  been  altered  and  was  not  fit  to  put  on,  upon 
which  I  committed  a  great  many  new  sins.  Putting 
on  another  suit,  I  went  up  to  the  Communion  table 
with  my  thoughts  all  in  a  maze,  and  with  an 
entire  distrust  in  my  excellent  disposition."  The 
comment  is  typical  in  its  avoidance  of  exaggerated 
regret  on  the  one  hand  and  of  self-complacency 
on  the  other.  Continually  he  returned  to  the 
exigencies  and  the  arrangements  of  conduct. 
Life  must  not  be  a  mere  confusion  of  discarded 
emotions.  There  must  be  even  a  programme 
entitled  "  Rules  of  Life."  But  as  usual  the  joy 
of  life  insinuated  itself  mockingly  between  the 
copybook  and  the  heart  :  "  Though  I  liked  the 
idea  of  drawing  up  rules  for  all  circumstances  of 
life,  and  taking  them  as  my  guide,  and  the  idea 
of  doing  so  seemed  to  me  a  very  simple  and  at 
the  same  time  a  very  grand  one,  and  though  I 
intended  to  apply  these  rules  to  my  life,  yet  I  again 
seemed  to  have  forgotten  that  this  had  to  be  done 
at  once  :    I  kept  putting  it  off." 


248  Two  Russian  Reformers 

Of  course  dreams  came  to  him  ;  he  would  muse 
on  the  ideal  woman,  and  in  such  moods  the  rust- 
ling of  skirts  outside  in  the  corridor  would  perturb 
him.  But  even  in  the  annotation  of  such  facts  as 
these  Tolstoy  is  precise  and  definite,  clothing,  as 
it  were,  his  very  reveries  with  clearly  realised 
human  flesh.  For,  his  judgment  told  him  that 
this  rustling  of  skirts  came  from  no  dream-woman 
at  all,  but  from  Gasha,  his  grandmother's  old 
maid-servant.  "  '  Yes, — but  if  it  were  she  ?  ' 
would  flash  across  my  mind.  *  But  if  it  has 
begun,  and  I  miss  it  ?  '  and  I  would  rush  into  the 
passage  and  see  that  it  was  really  Gasha  ;  but 
for  a  long  time  afterwards  I  would  be  unable  to 
master  my  thoughts." 

His  boyish  self-consciousness  followed  him 
across  the  threshold  of  manhood.  On  entering 
the  large  hall  of  the  University  Irteniev  feels 
a  little  embarrassed  b}^  the  finery  of  his  apparel. 
"  However,"  he  continues,  "  no  sooner  did  I 
enter  the  light,  crowded  hall,  and  see  hundreds  of 
young  fellows  come  in  school-uniforms  and  others 
in  frock-coats,  some  of  whom  looked  at  me  with 
indifference,  and  at  the  farther  end  of  the  hall 
several  eminent  professors,  walking  leisurely  round 
the  tables  or  sitting  in  large  arm-chairs,  than  I 
immediately  felt  disappointed  in  my  hopes  of 
attracting  general  attention,  and  my  face,  which 
at  home  and  in  the  entrance-hall  had  worn  an 
expression   of   something  like  regret   at   looking 


Tolstoy  249 

too  grand  and  fine,  now  expressed  nothing  but 
shyness  and  confusion."  The  same  consciousness 
of  focussing  the  general  interest  of  those  around 
him  continued  in  the  presence  of  the  examiners  : 
"  I  moved  closer  to  the  table,  but  the  professors 
kept  on  talking  almost  in  whispers,  as  if  none  of 
them  even  suspected  my  presence.  I  was  at  that 
time  quite  convinced  that  all  three  professors 
were  extraordinarily  interested  in  the  question 
whether  I  should  undergo  my  examination,  and 
whether  I  should  undergo  it  well,  and  that  it  was 
only  for  form's  sake  that  they  pretended  to  be 
perfectly  indifferent,  and  tried  to  look  as  if  they 
had  not  noticed  me." 

Failure  comes  to  him,  and  failure,  not  for 
the  last  time,  intimately  blended  with  injustice. 
But  even  in  this  bitter  moment  the  habit  of 
both  sections,  so  to  speak,  of  Tolstoy's  mind 
reveals  itself.  Long  afterwards  he  was  to  de- 
scribe the  movements,  the  counter-movements,  the 
sallies,  the  skirmishes,  the  blunders,  the  retreats, 
of  vast  masses  of  troops,  interpreting  not  merely 
the  spirit  of  a  company  or  a  regiment  or  a  corps, 
but  the  psychology  of  an  army.  And  while 
doing  this  supremely  difficult  thing,  he  was 
also  to  note,  with  a  Meissonier-like  exactitude 
that  Turgenev  himself  never  excelled,  the  detailed 
physical  life  of  a  particular  unit.  Moreover,  on 
the  same  ample  canvas  he  was  to  reveal  the 
inner  vagaries  of  the  human  mind,  face  to  face. 


250  Two  Russian  Reformers 

so  to  speak,  with  itself,  honest  with  itself  under 
the  near  menace  of  death.  Here  in  this  record 
of  youth  the  whole  method  appears,  in  embryo 
certainly,  but  at  the  same  time  with  unmis- 
takable distinctness  of  outline  :  "At  first  I  was 
worried  by  my  disappointment  at  not  being 
*  third,'  then  by  the  fear  of  not  passing  through 
at  all,  and  finally  came  the  perception  that  I 
was  treated  with  injustice,  of  wounded  self-love 
and  undeserved  degradation ;  besides  this  a 
feeling  of  contempt  for  the  professor — who  in 
my  opinion  was  not  a  man  comme  il  faut,  as  I 
discovered  by  looking  at  his  short,  round  nails 
— excited  and  embittered  me  still  more." 

Even  when  Irteniev  finds  himself  admitted 
to  the  status  of  a  grown-up  man  the  conflict 
between  the  capacity  for  human  enjoyment  and 
the  vast,  all-pervading  mystery  of  destiny  haunts 
him  in  the  very  moment  of  emancipation.  Even 
now  he  is  not  sure  that  he  is  happy ;  and  he 
continues  to  narrate  the  immemorial  experiments 
of  youth,  but  making  them  significant  of  all 
youth,  producing  the  illusion  of  universal  ex- 
perience as  opposed  to  mere  personal  narrative. 
Nor  does  he  judge  or,  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
sympathise  with  this  hero  of  his  youth.  He  is 
content  with  merely  registering  the  truth,  relating 
the  observed  fact  in  terms  of  his  own  individuality. 
And  not  only  does  he  utter  his  own  secrets,  but 
he  conveys  the  impression  of  revealing  those  of 


Tolstoy  251 

the  human  race.  Others,  pre-eminently  Rousseau, 
have  endeavoured  to  tell  the  whole  truth,  conceal- 
ing nothing  from  shame,  extenuating  nothing  from 
self-pity.  But  in  the  record  of  Tolstoy  there  is  a 
Slav  tang  of  self-defiance  which  is  wholly  alien 
from  the  insidious  communication  of  corrupt  con- 
fidences. Like  Turgenev,  he  utters  the  secret  of 
youth,  but  in  a  very  different  fashion.  For  the 
author  of  "  Smoke"  the  secret  of  youth  is  still  an 
enigma,  a  question,  while  for  Tolstoy  it  is  the  ever- 
open  book  of  his  own  intense  individuality.  And 
just  as  he  shrinks  from  acknowledging  no  phase 
of  sin,  so  he  is  willing  to  write  down  every  trivi- 
ality, from  the  effects  of  his  first  pipe  to  those 
of  half  a  bottle  of  champagne.  And  he  goes 
on  to  narrate  an  incident  which  led  up  to  a  piece 
of  introspection  absolutely  in  key  with  all  his 
later  work.  Irteniev,  it  seems,  approached  a 
table  at  which  two  gentlemen  were  seated,  and 
lit  a  cigarette  from  a  candle  which  was  standing 
between  them.  One  of  them  turned  furiously 
upon  this  boy  of  sixteen,  who  was  too  bewildered 
to  reply  to  him  adequately.  "  When  I  pondered 
over  the  way  I  had  acted  in  this  affair,"  writes 
Tolstoy,  "  the  awful  thought  suddenly  struck  me 
that  I  had  acted  like  a  coward.  What  right 
had  he  to  insult  me  ?  Why  did  not  he  simply 
say  that  it  annoyed  him  ?  Consequently  he 
was  in  the  wrong.  Why  then,  when  he  called  me 
rude,  did  I  not  say  to  him,  'A  rude  person,  sir, 


252  Two  Russian  Reformers 

is  one  that  takes  a  liberty  to  be  impertinent,' 
or  why  did  not  I  simply  shout  out,  '  Hold  your 
tongue  !  '  ?  It  would  have  been  a  very  good 
thing.  Why  didn't  I  challenge  him  ?  No  !  I 
did  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  bore  the  insult  like 
a  mean  coward."  Thus  he  broods  in  his  eager, 
puzzled  boyhood  ;  it  is  human  nature  in  the  raw. 
There  will  be  many  refinements  under  the  influence 
of  this  or  that  phase  of  spiritual  development, 
but  Nicolai  Irteniev  is  essentially  the  prototype 
of  those  more  finished  interpretations  of  Tolstoy's 
personality — Pierre  in  "  War  and  Peace,"  and 
Levin  in  "  Anna  Karanina." 

Nor  has  he,  in  this  early  book,  which  is  ad- 
mittedly a  volume  of  memory,  anything  essential 
to  learn  in  the  art  of  realism.  It  was  said  of 
"  War  and  Peace  "  when  it  first  appeared  that 
it  was  not  so  much  lifelike  as  life  itself.  Almost 
the  same  may  be  said  of  any  work  bearing  the 
impress  of  Count  Tolstoy.  Undoubtedly  the  book 
of  "  Youth "  has  that  impress,  but  its  very 
comedy  is  grave,  as  though  Tolstoy  were  too 
profoundly  preoccupied  with  the  analysis  of 
human  nature  to  smile  at  its  follies.  Here,  how- 
ever, is  a  morsel  of  comedy  which,  in  spite  of 
its  gravity,  has  in  it  the  very  zest  of  life  and 
youth.  Irteniev  had  been  asked  by  some  ladies 
if  he  had  read  "  Rob  Roy,"  which  they  had  just 
been  reading  aloud.  "  Throwing  a  glance  at 
my  fashionable  trousers  and  the  shining  buttons 


Tolstoy  253 

of  my  coat,  I  said  that  I  had  not  read  '  Rob 
Roy,'  but  that  I  was  much  interested  in  hstening, 
for  I  Uked  better  to  read  books  from  the  middle 
than  from  the  beginning.  *  It  is  twice  as  inte- 
resting. You  have  to  guess  what  has  gone  on 
before  and  what  is  going  to  happen,'  added  I 
with  a  self-conceited  smile.  The  princess  laughed 
— a  forced  laugh  as  it  seemed  to  me  (I  after- 
wards noticed  that  she  always  laughed  thus). 
'  Very  likely,'  said  she." 

But  beneath  all  these  affectations,  which  after 
all  are  only  the  vagaries  of  human  nature,  Irteniev 
was  already  groping  after  the  inner  meaning  of 
things.  He  had  already  commenced  to  analyse 
the  idea  of  love,  to  which  he  applied  the  rational- 
ising principle  which  is  so  alien  from  Turgenev's 
delicate  fantasies  of  passion.  Already,  without 
knowing  it,  Tolstoy  was  seeking  for  that  simplifi- 
cation of  the  emotions  which  he  expressed  on  a 
small  canvas  in  "  My  Husband  and  I,"  and  on 
a  large  canvas  in  "  War  and  Peace."  As  yet, 
however,  he  did  not  venture  to  try  the  same 
experiment  with  passion  which  he  was  to  attempt 
on  a  small  scale  in  the  "  Kreutzer  Sonata"  and 
on  a  large  scale  in  "  Anna  Karanina."  But 
already  this  healthy  pagan  has  become  suffi- 
ciently permeated  by  the  desire  for  simplicity 
to  pause  even  in  the  first  glorious  moments  of 
youth's  emancipation.  This  desire  for  simplicity 
is  the  very  kernel  of  the  reformer's  faith. 

16 


254  Two  Russian  Reformers 

As  yet,  however,  he  cannot  live  otherwise 
than  intently  and  intensely.  Nor  can  he  help 
noting  the  people  around  him  with  those  micro- 
scopic eyes  that  detect  variations  of  character 
as  ordinary  eyes  detect  the  primary  colours. 
In  this  respect  there  is  something  Shakespearian 
about  Tolstoy.  To  each  of  them  a  merely 
commonplace,  colourless  person  is  almost  non- 
existent. Anybody  and  everybody  flash  into 
life  under  the  vision  of  either  pair  of  irradiating 
eyes.  Each  of  them  throws  off  a  human  char- 
acter as  ordinary  people  throw  off  a  coat.  Shake- 
speare's subordinate  characters  leap  into  being 
with  the  introduction  of  a  few  words.  In  the 
vital  atmosphere  of  their  creator  they  cannot  be 
suppressed  as  the  subordinate  characters  of  Racine 
or  even  of  Corneille  are  suppressed.  Pistol  has 
drunk  of  the  same  inexhaustible  elixir  as  Henry  V.: 
the  same  electricity  vibrates  through  Goldenstein 
as  through  Hamlet.  Though  this  is  not  at  all 
the  case  with  Tolstoy,  so  far  as  treatment  is 
concerned,  the  result  is  to  no  small  extent  the 
same.  Shakespeare  apparently  produces  the  illu- 
sion of  infinite  life  unconsciously,  unconcernedly 
even.  As  from  the  brain  of  Zeus,  his  children 
leap  forth  fully  armed  and  gloriously  complete. 
The  magic  of  Tolstoy  is  not  the  magic  of  Shake- 
speare. But  the  Russian  gains  his  almost  equally 
extraordinary  effects  by  his  concentrated  interest 
in  himself  and  in  the  most  obscure  of  his  fellow- 


Tolstoy  255 

beings.  What  others  have  written  about  until 
the  flogged  adjectives  seem  to  grimace  at  one 
through  the  printer's  ink,  Tolstoy  reproduces 
as  though  no  one  had  ever  mused  upon  it  before. 
And  his  method  is  not  at  all  the  industrious 
notebook  method  of  Zola.  Tolstoy  takes  you 
into  a  room,  and  you  see  everything  because  he 
has  told  you  everything,  instead  of  insinuating 
the  illusion  as  Turgenev^insinuates  it.  But  there 
is  nothing  of  the  mere  catalogue  in  these  de- 
scriptions. Every  note  is  made  because  of  his 
interest  in  the  object,  and  so  interested  is  he 
in  everything  around  him  that  he  communicates 
this  interest  to  the  most  indifferent.  He  is 
interesting  by  accident,  sometimes  even  against 
his  will.  For  Turgenev  the  memory  of  youth 
was  a  perplexing  secret  which  he  could  neither 
explain  nor  keep  wholly  to  himself ;  for  Tolstoy 
it  was  a  problem  of  human  experience  which  he 
wished  to  demonstrate  to  mankind. 

For  even  in  the  very  early  days  he  was  strug- 
gling to  pierce  beneath  the  surface  of  life,  and 
to  detect  some  meaning  other  than  that  menacing 
handwriting  upon  the  wall.  And,  later,  in  his 
search  for  some  hint  of  alleviation  he  returned, 
as  Turgenev  returned,  to  the  enthralling  sen- 
sations of  youth.  In  "  Life,"  for  example,  he 
writes  on  the  subject  of  love  :  "  Who  among 
living  people  does  not  know  that  blissful  sensa- 
tion— even   if  but   once   experienced,   and   most 


256  Two  Russian  Reformers 

frequently  of  all  in  earliest  childhood,  before  the 
soul  is  yet  choked  up  with  all  that  lie  which 
stifles  the  life  in  us — that  blessed  feeling  of 
emotion,  during  which  one  desires  to  love  every- 
body, both  those  near  to  him,  his  father  and 
mother  and  brothers,  and  wicked  people,  and  his 
enemies,  and  his  dog  and  his  horse,  and  a  blade 
of  grass  ;  he  desires  one  thing — that  it  should 
be  well  with  everybody,  that  all  should  be  happy  ; 
and  still  more  he  desires  that  he  himself  may 
act  so  that  it  may  be  well  with  all,  that  he  may 
give  himself  and  his  whole  life  to  making  others 
comfortable  and  happy.  And  this,  this  alone, 
is  that  love  in  which  lies  the  life  of  man." 

Turgenev  returned  to  his  youth  to  win  back  the 
savour  of  a  remembered  impression ;  Tolstoy 
m  spite  of  his  pagan  enjoyment  of  life  returned 
to  it  in  order  to  live  over  again  the  earliest 
manifestations  of  spiritual  experience.  Turgenev 
viewed  life  as  a  sombre  pageant  of  which  he 
himself  was  an  insignificant  unit  passing  on  like 
the  rest,  he  knew  not  whither  ;  Tolstoy,  almost 
from  the  very  beginning,  almost  in  the  first 
flushed  days  of  childhood  itself,  viewed  life  as  an 
enigma  that  might  be  read  and  that  concealed 
in  its  apparent  meaninglessness  a  deep  spiritual 
truth.  The  youth  of  Turgenev  is  interesting  as 
the  autobiography  of  an  artist  whose  first  and 
last  fidelity  was  to  his  art  ;  the  youth  of  Tolstoy 
is  interesting  as  the  autobiography  of  a  moralist 


Tolstoy  257 

who  is  at  the  same  time  endowed  with  an  excep- 
tional capacity  for  pleasure.  Furthermore,  it  is 
the  beginning  of  a  register  of  moral  conduct 
which,  starting  in  that  nursery  of  his  old  home, 
was  to  become  the  moral  standard  of  the  civilised 
world. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  autobiography  of  Tolstoy  is  not  written 
in  one  or  twobooks,  but  in  several.  Irteniev, 
who  had  himself  arrived  at  the  germs  of 
some  of  Tolstoy's  most  famous  works,  was  to 
become  Nekhliudov,  who  was  at  least  a  stage 
nearer  to  Pierre  and  Levin,  both  of  whom  are 
so  intimately  associated  with  the  personality  of 
their  creator.  But  before  arriving  at  these  stages 
it  is  necessary  to  glance  at  Olenine,  the  hero  of 
**  The  Cossacks,"  who  in  his  turn  was  to  become 
the  hero  of  "  Sebastopol  Sketches."  All  four 
of  these  incarnations  of  Tolstoy,  in  spite  of  their 
gropings  towards  spirituality,  were  overwhelm- 
ingly attracted  by  the  pagan  happiness  of  life. 
Tolstoy  was  from  childhood  a  keen  sportsman,  and 
his  record  of  youth  was  written  in  the  Caucasus, 
where  he  also  wrote  "The  Caucasian  Prisoner," 
the  central  adventure  of  which  actually  happened. 
That  adventure  is  significant  because  it  shows 
Tolstoy  the  soldier  and  sportsman,  acting  on 
impulse  and  forgetting  to  moralise  in  the  swift 
necessity  of  action. 

He  had  set  out  for  the  Caucasus  in  a  travelling 

258 


Tolstoy  259 

coach  in  which  he  was  accompanied  by  his  brother 
and  a  single  servant.  They  followed  the  left 
bank  of  the  Volga,  but  wearying  of  this  they 
chartered  a  huge  barge,  placed  their  coach  on 
it  and  floated  tranquilly  down  the  river.  It 
took  them  three  weeks  to  reach  Astrakhan,  but 
the  time  was  not  lost  for  the  future  novelist  at 
least ;  his  eyes  were  drinking  in  impressions  on 
every  side  which  he  was  afterwards  to  reproduce. 
And  sometimes,  as  they  approached  the  shore  on 
the  lower  flats  of  the  Volga,  the  young  Russians 
would  catch  glimpses  of  the  fire-worshipping 
Calmucks  grouped  around  blazing  bonfires. 

In  the  Caucasus,  Count  Tolstoy  became  a  friend 
of  a  certain  Sodo,  of  the  tribe  of  the  Tchet- 
chenias,  from  whom  he  bought  a  horse.  One 
day  the  young  artillery  offtcer  set  out  with  Sodo 
from  the  fortress  where  his  detachment  was  posted. 
In  spite  of  the  fact  that  during  the  war  with  the 
mountain  tribes  all  such  excursions  were  forbidden, 
two  other  artillery  officers  joined  them.  None 
of  them,  with  the  exception  of  Sodo,  was  armed 
with  anything  more  formidable  than  a  Circassian 
sabre.  They  were  all  in  excellent  spirits ;  and 
Sodo,  after  trying  his  own  horse,  offered  it  to  his 
friend  and  leaped  on  to  the  Count's  horse,  which 
was  not  nearly  so  fast.  When  they  were  some 
miles  away  frond  the  fortress  they  were  attacked 
by  a  band  of  some  twenty  Tchetchenias.  Two 
of  the  Russian  officers  galloped  back  towards  the 


26o  Two  Russian  Reformers 

fortress,  and  of  these  one  was  hacked  to  pieces 
and  the  other  taken  prisoner.  Sodo,  followed  by- 
Tolstoy,  had  turned  his  horse  in  the  direction  of 
a  Cossack  picket  which  was  stationed  about  a 
verst  away.  Their  pursuers  gained  upon  them, 
and  though  upon  his  faster  horse  Tolstoy  could 
easily  have  made  his  escape,  he  remained  with 
his  friend.  Sodo  had  brought  a  gun,  and  though 
it  was  unloaded,  he  pretended  to  fire,  uttering  a 
wild  cry  of  defiance.  For  some  reason  or  other, 
probably  because  they  wished  to  torture  Sodo, 
the  tribesmen  did  not  fire,  and  Tolstoy  and  his 
companion  reached  the  picket  in  safety. 

On  another  occasion  Tolstoy  was  in  despair 
about  a  large  sum  of  money  which  he  had  lost  at 
the  card-table.  In  this  despair  he  shut  himself  up 
alone  and  prayed  to  God  to  preserve  him  from  the 
humiliation  of  leaving  a  debt  of  honour  unpaid. 
While  he  was  praying  a  letter  from  Sodo  was 
brought  to  him,  and  on  opening  the  envelope  he 
found  his  own  note  of  hand  torn  into  fragments. 
His  faithful  friend  having  won  a  large  sum  of 
money  at  cards,  had  immediately  used  his  win- 
nings to  save  the  Count's  honour. 

Tolstoy  had  gone  to  the  Caucasus  as  a  non- 
commissioned officer,  and  had  quickly  distinguished 
himself  for  gallantry.  Through  the  personal 
grudge,  however,  of  a  superior  officer,  he  was  not 
recommended  for  the  Cross  of  St.  George.  Later 
on  in  his  career  he  was  almost  within  reach  of  the 


Tolstoy  261 

coveted  distinction,  and  at  last  he  was  told  that 
the  Cross  would  actually  be  given  to  him,  but  that 
a  private  soldier  also  deserved  it.  As  the  Cross 
included  a  pension  in  the  case  of  the  private 
soldier,  the  Count  consented  to  stand  aside. 
Tolstoy's  attitude  towards  physical  courage,  as 
C.  Behrs  notes,  changed  as  early  as  the  period  of 
his  active  service  in  the  Caucasus.  Like  every 
other  high-spirited  young  soldier,  he  had  at  first 
considered  those  alone  courageous  who  performed 
some  showy  act  of  gallantry  upon  the  field.  But 
in  future  novels  he  was  to  depict  as  the  true 
heroes  of  war  those  modest  and  often  anonymous 
company  officers  and  private  soldiers  who  per- 
form their  duties  under  fire  as  scrupulously  as 
though  they  were  on  parade. 

At  Sebastopol  Tolstoy  was  a  frequent  visitor 
at  the  house  of  his  relative.  Prince  Gortschakoff, 
the  commander-in-chief  of  the  Russian  forces, 
and  he  was  offered  an  appointment  on  the  staff, 
which  he  declined.  The  refusal  was  characteristic, 
and  proves  conclusively  that  his  sympathy  with 
the  ranks  in  which  he  continued  to  serve  was  of 
a  very  early  development.  This  sympathy  with 
the  private  soldier  and  this  prejudice  against 
staff  officers  were  alike  expounded  in  his  great 
work,  "  War  and  Peace." 

In  1866  Behrs  accompanied  him  to  the  field 
of  Borodino  in  connection  with  the  writing  of 
this  book  :     "  For   two   days  Leo  Nicholaevitch 


262  Two  Russian  Reformers 

wandered  over  the  spot  where  fifty  years  ago  a 
hundred  thousand  men  had  been  slaughtered, 
and  where  we  were  now  confronted  by  a  memorial 
statue  with  its  golden  tablets  and  inscriptions.  .  .  . 
He  made  the  minutest  investigations,  and  drew 
a  plan  of  the  fight,  which  was  afterwards  pub- 
lished as  a  frontispiece  to  one  of  the  volumes  of 
*  War  and  Peace.'  " 

One  cannot  understand  any  period  of  Tolstoy's 
life  unless  one  realises  his  passion  for  open-air 
life,  his  love  of  the  excitement  of  war,  his  delight 
in  every  kind  of  sport.  So  far  as  his  external  life 
is  concerned,  the  love  of  sport  continued  until 
the  development  of  his  spiritual  convictions  made 
him  conscious  of  its  underlying  cruelty.  Con- 
stantly this  love  of  sport  breaks  out  in  all  his 
earlier  works.  One  can  hear  the  swish  of  the 
wet  underwood,  the  panting  of  dogs,  the  pounding 
of  hoofs,  in  page  after  page  of  his  works.  He 
sketches  dogs  and  horses  with  greater  minuteness 
than  other  novelists  apply  to  human  beings. 
Tolstoy,  indeed,  notes  the  delights  of  sport,  the 
delights  of  fatigue  and  even  physical  exhaustion, 
with  a  relish  and  abundance  of  detail  compared 
with  which  Turgenev's  sketches  at  first  glance 
seem  almost  pale.  The  physical  with  Tolstoy  is 
reproduced  with  all  its  flesh  and  blood  and  tissue 
and  throbbing  arteries.  Merezhkovsky  notes  this 
enthusiasm  for  out-of-door  exercise  with  a  certain 
animus,  but  Behrs  describes  Tolstoy  engaged  in 


Tolstoy  263 

shooting  steppe  grouse  with  a  pleasure  almost 
equal  to  his  own  :  "  The  Count  used  to  ride  out 
to  the  strepets  on  a  horse  expressly  trained  for 
the  purpose,  and  after  riding  at  foot  pace  two  or 
three  times  round  the  covey,  taking  care  each  time 
to  narrow  the  circle  till  he  was  at  a  distance  of 
from  six  to  seven  hundred  feet,  dashed  forth  at 
full  gallop  with  loaded  gun  in  readiness.  The 
instant  the  birds  rose  he  dropped  the  reins  on  the 
neck  of  the  horse,  and  the  animal,  understanding 
the  signal,  pulled  up  sharp,  and  thus  enabled  him 
to  shoot."  Long  afterwards  he  was  to  substitute 
for  sport  such  natural  forms  of  exercise  as  plough- 
ing, felling  trees,  and  making  huts. 

But  in  the  period  of  "  The  Cossacks,"  that 
continuation  of  the  record  of  youth,  Tolstoy 
abandoned  himself  to  an  almost  completely  pagan 
revelry  in  the  open  air.  Of  all  the  pagan  char- 
acters who  are  temperamentally  sympathetic  with 
him,  none  is  more  vitally  real  tlian  the  old  sports- 
man, Uncle  Eroshka.  Many  writers,  particularly 
among  Anglo-Saxons,  have  written  on  sport  and 
sportsmen,  but  no  one  of  them  has  given  us  a 
figure  to  compare  for  a  moment  with  this  master 
of  woodcraft.  Uncle  Eroshka  lives  as  naturally 
as  the  trees  with  which  he  is  so  familiar  ;  he  is 
as  much  in  perspective  as  any  of  the  landmarks 
which  his  wary  eye  so  easily  detects.  The  man 
lives  as  Falstaff  lives,  utterly  independent  of 
praise  or  blame.     One  can  almost  smell  the  powder 


264  Two  Russian  Reformers 

in  his  pockets  ;  one  can  almost  read  the  whipped 
lines  that  seam  the  cunning  old  face.  Tolstoy 
drew  him  with  all  his  contours,  just  as  he  was, 
with  no  conscious  benevolence  of  touch,  but  with 
a  -kinship  that  lay  at  the  very  roots  of  his  being. 
All  the  moralising  soliloquies  of  Olenine  pale 
before  the  buoyant  effrontery  of  the  old  man's 
non-m.oral  wisdom.  Uncle  Eroshka,  right  or 
wrong,  has  learnt  his  lesson  of  life,  and  is  too  old 
for  new  ways.  Years  and  years  afterwards,  when 
Count  Tolstoy  had  travelled  many  a  weary  stage 
of  the  Via  Dolorosa  of  human  perfection,  there 
remained  something  in  his  heart  that  responded 
to  his  mentor  in  the  Caucasus. 

But  even  in  his  youth,  in  the  midst  of  this 
untrammelled  life,  surrounded  as  he  was  by 
primitive  half-savage  beings,  Tolstoy  was  conscious 
of  the  pervading  presence  of  a  moral  law  that 
demanded  from  the  human  soul  the  very  opposite 
of  Uncle  Eroshka' s  enthusiasm  for  life.  Olenine 
had  fled  from  cities  to  heal  his  soul  through  the 
simplification  of  the  open-air  life,  but  the  idea  of 
the  moral  law  as  opposed  to  the  right  of  individual 
enjoyment  pursued  him  into  the  silent  places. 
In  the  Caucasus  there  were  still  rules  of  conduct, 
just  as  there  had  been  years  and  years  before  in 
that  childhood  whose  sensations  he  was  even 
then  recording  with  that  completeness  of  memory 
which  it  was  part  of  his  genius  to  infuse  into 
art.     His  method  of  presentation,  in  spite  of  his 


Tolstoy  265 

youth,  was  strangely  mature,  and  was,  now  as 
always,  antagonistic  to  that  of  Turgenev.  The 
author  of  "  Smoke "  evokes  a  memory  as  one 
recalls  a  lost  echo  of  happiness  with  closed  eyes  ; 
Tolstoy  relates  exactly  what  happened  as  though 
it  were  an  accurately  observed  incident  of  yester- 
day. It  was  the  art  of  Turgenev  to  woo  this 
or  that  phantom  back  to  him,  and  then  quickly 
he  or  she  would  assume  the  delicate,  always 
half-veiled  tints  of  life.  Tolstoy  would  recall, 
as  from  a  short  distance,  his  men  and  women  as 
though  they  were  old  friends  whose  inner  and 
outer  lives  he  knew  by  heart.  Turgenev  avoided 
the  ordinary  by  reason  of  his  penetrating  analysis, 
which  struck  always  at  the  core  of  a  character  ; 
Tolstoy  avoided  it  by  his  amplitude  of  detail, 
by  his  sustained  and  amazing  knowledge  of  life. 

And  this  intellectual  truthfulness  is  as  con- 
spicuous in  the  early  stages  as  in  his  mature 
works.  It  pervades  the  "  Sebastopol  Sketches  "  no 
less  certainly  than  "War  and  Peace."  Irteniev 
had  watched  the  life  of  his  home,  the  life  of  his 
fellow-students  and  all  the  familiar  environment 
of  youth  ;  Olenine  had  watched  life  in  the  open, 
life  among  the  tribesmen,  life  as  it  appeared  to 
Uncle  Eroshka.  At  Sebastopol  the  young  soldier 
who  had  refused  a  staff  appointment  was  to 
watch  the  personnel  of  the  Russian  army  as 
probably  no  one  had  ever  watched  it  before. 
He  never  describes  any  of  the  military  types  as 


266  Two  Russian  Reformers 

they  have  been  described  by  others.  He  will 
not  arrange  war  into  photographs  of  picturesque 
battle  scenes.  On  the  other  hand  he  will  not 
pose  as  a  cynic,  too  blase  to  interest  himself 
even  in  war.  He  is  interested  in  the  clash  of 
armies,  and  the  whole  meaning  of  war  reveals 
itself  suddenly  as  by  magic  beneath  the  realism  of 
his  touch.  But  at  Sebastopol,  as  in  the  Caucasus, 
the  young  soldier  is  also  a  moralist.  The  rules 
of  conduct  have  not  been  abandoned  even  here. 
He  must  be  strictly  truthful  in  dealing  with 
himself  as  well  as  with  those  around  him.  He 
must  register  accurately,  not  merely  the  outer 
masks  of  men,  but  their  inner  feelings.  He 
must  learn  what  fear  is  and  courage  and  egotism 
and  self-sacrifice.  And  in  dealing  with  all  these 
emotions  he  is  as  pagan  in  his  inflexibility  of 
attitude,  in  his  whole-hearted  honesty,  as  he  is 
pagan  in  describing  the  pleasures  of  a  bear- 
hunt,  or  a  sledge-drive  through  the  snow-laden 
night.  He  is  struggling  half  for  truth  and  half 
against  it,  as  it  were,  even  as  the  pagans  struggled 
against  that  Christian  truth  whose  power  they 
half  divined,  but  which  they  knew  well  would 
destroy  the  very  sap  of  their  strength.  Of  that 
essential  Christian  pity  and  shrinking  from  vio- 
lence, or  even  of  that  instinctive  and  spontaneous 
sympathy  which  was  Turgenev's  birthright,  Tol- 
stoy knew  nothing.  But  he  began  dimly  to 
realise  that  here  at  Sebastopol  were  good  men 


Tolstoy  267 

on  both  sides  killing  each  other  without  any- 
known  motive.  As  for  the  idea  of  exploiting 
war  from  the  standpoint  of  the  theatre,  Tolstoy 
was  from  the  very  first  a  pupil  of  Stendhal,  whom 
he  greatly  admired.  But  though  his  thesis  in 
this  early  volume,  as  later  on  in  "  War  and 
Peace,"  may  have  been  that  war  was  essentially 
uninteresting,  his  own  works  remain  the  most 
vivid  proofs  to  the  contrary.  For  Tolstoy  may 
start  with  the  general  idea  of,  let  us  say,  the 
monotony  of  war.  Little  by  little,  however, 
he  forgets  his  thesis.  He  becomes  animated  and 
interested  ;  his  wonderful  eyes  have  long  ago 
absorbed  all  the  colour  and  detail.  His  insight 
reveals  and  communicates  to  others  those  vibra- 
tions of  electricity  that  pass  from  a  unit  to 
a  company,  and  then  from  a  company  to  a 
regiment,  and  then  from  a  regiment  to  an  army 
corps,  until  a  whole  army  quivers  into  life  under 
this  vitalising  power  of  evocation.  This  strange 
power  can  be  detected  in  "  Sketches  of  Sebasto- 
pol,"  and  it  is  the  same  in  essence  as  that  which 
was  afterwards  displayed  on  the  magnificent 
canvas  of  "  War  and  Peace." 

In  the  same  way  the  hero  of  "A  Squire's 
Morning  "  has  essentially  the  same  desires  for  a 
sane  and  useful  country  life  as  were  afterwards 
to  be  experienced  by  Levin  in  "  Anna  Karanina." 
The  simple  treatise  on  marriage  entitled  "  My 
Husband  and  I  "  was  seemingly  to  pass  through 


268  Two  Russian  Reformers 

a  more  subtle  transformation  before  emerging 
as  "  The  Kreutzer  Sonata."  But  in  reality  the 
same  ruthless  search  for  simplicity  has  been 
at  work.  What  in  the  early  volume  had  been 
merely  a  gentle  satire  on  romanticism  has  passed 
into  a  savage  attack  upon  the  complexity  and 
artificiality  that  are  introduced  into  the  relations 
between  the  sexes.  In  the  same  way  that  book 
of  an  even  more  remorseless  reality,  "  The  Death 
of  Ivan  Ilyitch,"  is  a  normal  development  of 
the  germ  idea  contained  in  those  sombre  sketches 
"  Three  Deaths."  And  from  the  very  beginning 
Tolstoy  was  absorbed  by  the  great  simple  motifs 
of  life,  physical  courage  and  the  healthy  natural 
activity  evoked  by  it  ;  delight  in  outdoor  life, 
and  the  intelligent  management  of  dependants  ; 
love,  followed  by  rational  domesticity ;  and, 
finally,  the  recognition  of  death,  and  the  recog- 
nition that  it,  too,  should  harmonise  with  the 
general  scheme  of  things.  All  these  interests 
persisted  in  the  work  of  Count  Tolstoy,  whp  in 
later  years  was  to  lay  stress  upon  the  purely 
spiritual  side  of  each,  was  even  to  go  so  far  in 
his  apostate  zeal  as  to  deny  to  art  any  appeal 
beyond  that  which  it  can  make  to  the  very 
narrowest  intelligence. 

But  in  the  early  days  he  had  no  mission,  or 
at  all  events  no  conscious  mission.  He  left  the 
army  after  the  Crimean  War  with  the  rank  of 
lieutenant  in  the  artillery,  and  the  period  between 


o 
o 

X 

X 


0 

H 


<1- 


269 


Tolstoy  271 

his  resignation  and  his  marriage  in  1862  was 
spent  partly  in  the  capital,  partly  in  European 
travelling,  and  partly  among  the  Bashkirs  when 
he  went  to  drink  koumiss.  It  was  in  the  steppes 
of  Bashkir  that  Tolstoy  renewed  the  old  associa- 
tions of  Olenine  in  "  The  Cossacks."  Here  he 
was  absolutely  at  home,  and  here  he  lived  simply, 
a  genuine  comrade  of  Uncle  Eroshka,  who  had 
no  need  of  writing  any  thesis  on  simplification. 
His  brother-in-law  has  described  a  visit  which 
Tolstoy  paid  with  him  in  1870  to  these  steppes 
of  Bashkir.  All  his  life  Tolstoy  has  detested 
railways,  and  in  order  to  avoid  them  it  used 
to  be  his  habit  to  walk  from  Yasnaya  Polyana 
to  his  winter  quarters  in  Moscow.  When  he 
did  travel  by  rail,  the  Count,  like  the  hero  of 
"  Resurrection,"  travelled  third  class,  and  de- 
lighted in  entering  into  conversation  with  the 
peasants.  He  had  the  faculty  of  making  friends 
easily  with  strangers,  and  particularly  with  mem- 
bers of  half-savage  races,  as  he  proved  so  con- 
spicuously during  his  adventures  in  the  Caucasus. 
Among  the  Bashkirs  he  was  understood  from 
the  first,  and  was  always  spoken  of  as  "  the 
Count."  His  presence  among  the  Russian  kou- 
miss drinkers  acted  like  a  charm.  "  A  teacher 
at  one  of  our  seminaries,"  writes  Behrs,  "  in  spite 
of  his  age  tried  skipping-rope  matches  with  him  ; 
an  attorney's  chief  clerk  liked  to  debate  with 
him  on  questions  of  literature  and  philosophy  ; 

17 


272  Two  Russian  Reformers 

and  a  young  farmer  from  the  Government  of 
Samara  became  one  of  his  devoted  and  attached 
followers."  But  his  sociability  allowed  of  no 
mistake  in  regard  to  his  innate  dignity,  as  a 
little  incident  at  the  Petrovsky  Fair  shows.  The 
Fair  was  held  at  Boszoulouk,  and  frequented 
by  a  medley  of  nationalities  including  Russian 
moujiks,  Euro-Cossacks,  Bashkirs,  and  Kashigse. 
"  Once,"  writes  Behrs,  "  a  drunken  moujik  in- 
spired by  a  superfluous  excess  of  affection  wished 
to  embrace  him,  but  a  stern  look  from  the  Count 
was  sufficient  to  make  him  draw  back,  as  he 
muttered  a  kind  of  apology :  *  No,  pardon  me,  I 
pray  you.'  " 

Some  eight  years  later  Tolstoy  and  his  brother- 
in-law  spent  another  summer  at  Samara,  and 
on  this  occasion  the  Count  organised  a  great 
sporting  festival  on  his  own  estate.  All  the 
Bashkirs,  Cossacks  and  moujiks  took  the  keenest 
interest  in  the  competitions,  and  raced  for  such 
prizes  as  an  ox,  a  horse,  a  gun,  a  clock,  and  even 
a  dressing-gown.  The  races  were  witnessed  by 
several  thousand  people,  and  the  festival  lasted 
for  two  whole  days,  no  police  of  any  kind  being 
in  attendance.  "  We  ourselves,"  writes  Tolstoy's 
son-in-law,  "  levelled  and  cleared  the  course, 
measured  off  a  large  circlfj  five  versts  in  length, 
and  erected  a  starting-post.  For  the  dinner  that 
was  to  follow,  huge  joints  of  mutton  and  horse- 
flesh   and    other    dainties    were    provided."     It 


Tolstoy  273 

was  the  complete  apotheosis  of  the  pagan  side 
of  Count  Tolstoy,  and  one  can  almost  hear  him 
exclaiming,  like  a  veritable  Uncle  Eroshka,  "  I 
am  a  merry  fellow."  That  side  of  Tolstoy  was 
not  at  all  contaminated  by  the  suggestion  of 
death,  by  which  Merezhkovsky  maintains  that 
Tolstoy  has  perturbed  a  generation.  The  pagans 
who  loved  life  so  well  did  not  shrink  from  death, 
and  at  no  time  did  Count  Tolstoy  shrink  from  it. 
Nor  was  it  this  preoccupation  with  death  that 
drove  him  towards  spirituality,  forcing  him  thus 
to  become  what  so  many  have  called  the  second 
Tolstoy.  It  was  not  at  all  this  that  "  converted  " 
Count  Tolstoy. 

For  this  very  festival,  with  all  its  Homeric 
accessories,  was  held  in  the  year  of  the  so- 
called  "  conversion."  And  in  this  year  (1878), 
so  far  as  the  gaudium  vitcB  and  the  healthy 
pagan  delight  in  the  outside  world  are  con- 
cerned, it  is  precisely  the  same  Tolstoy  as  he  who 
had  changed  horses  with  Sodo  and  fraternised 
with  the  old  Uncle  in  the  Caucasus  nearly  thirty 
years  before. 

It  is  this  essential  interest  in  life,  this  content 
with  the  world  as  it  is,  that  have  always  continued 
to  fight  against  the  brooder  that  lurks  in  Count 
Tolstoy,  the  man  who  drew  up  rules  of  conduct, 
the  man  who  recalled  in  crowds  or  in  solitude 
the  fact  that  each  of  us  must  die.  His  pagan 
objectivity,  which   survived   all  intellectual   and 


274  Two  Russian  Reformers 

emotional  changes,  certainly  overshadowed  the 
brooding  tendency  in  the  early  years ;  and  though 
he  gave  up  the  army  and  settled  down  to  author- 
ship in  St.  Petersburg,  he  had  no  definite  idea  of 
becoming  the  propagandist  that  he  afterwards 
became.  But  even  at  this  period  he  was  inte- 
rested in  the  study  of  education,  and  was  at  times 
profoundly  dissatisfied  with  his  own  teachings  and 
that  of  his  fellow-authors.  ^-For,  at  no  time  in  his 
career  could  he  altogether  separate  the  art  of 
literature  from  the  morality  of  instruction.  Dur- 
ing his  visits  to  various  European  countries  he 
studied  the  different  methods  of  education,  so  that 
he  might  improve  the  conditions  of  Russian  schools. 
He  had  commenced  to  grope  already  after  that 
larger  meaning  of  life,  that  meaning  which  not 
merely  included  himself  and  his  own  particular 
family  group,  but  the  Russian  people.  He  was 
afterwards  to  extend  that  meaning  to  the  whole 
of  suffering  humanity. 

St.  Petersburg  even  then  was  antipathetic  to 
him,  just  as  it  had  been  when  he  fled  from  it  to 
the  Caucasus ;  and  on  his  return  from  abroad 
he  settled  down  at  Yasnaya  Polyana,  where  he 
devoted  himself  to  the  establishment  of  his 
famous  school,  and  to  literature.  From  that 
moment  he  may  be  said  to  have  become  the 
representative  of  the  Russian  consciousness  in 
his  own  country. 

His  development  from  that  moment  seems  to 


Tolstoy  275 

have  been  normal,  for  with  the  advancing  years 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  brooding  inquirer  in 
Tolstoy  should  encroach  more  and  more  upon  the 
robust  pagan  who  stood  for  the  joy  of  youth. 
This  gradual  and  normal  encroachment  which 
can  be  traced  through  all  his  works,  including  even 
the  earliest,  accounts  quite  reasonably  for  that 
second  Tolstoy  who  is  supposed  to  have  sprung 
into  being  after  a  sudden,  almost  inexplicable, 
"  conversion."  There  is  no  divorce — one  cannot 
repeat  it  too  often — between  the  author  of  "  Anna 
Karanina "  and  the  author  of  "Resurrection." 

Yet,  apart  altogether  from  tins  question  as  to 
whether  his  "  conversion  "  did  or  did  not  change 
his  artistic  work,  the  different  impressions  that 
have  been  formed  of  this  enigmatic  figure  become 
more  and  more  perplexing  with  the  years.  Con- 
stantly we  obtain  alien  glimpses  of  him  through 
the  most  incongruous  and  antagonistic  spectacles. 
Viewed  in  the  light  of  our  own  nonconformist 
conscience,  for  example,  Tolstoy  appears  to  be 
a  good  man,  almost  a  good  Englishman  in  fact, 
trying  to  do  good  in  the  practical  English  fashion, 
earning  heaven,  indeed,  according  to  the  English 
standard,  by  doing  an  adequate  measure  of  good 
upon  earth. 

Then  again  a  German  dreamer  sees  in  him 
a  teacher  in  the  old  almost  forgotten  sense  of  a 
visionary  emancipator  of  the  world,  a  Faust  of  the 
soul,  as  it  were,  rather  than  of  the  intelligence. 


276  Two  Russian  Reformers 

And  we  see  him  enshrined  in  that  simple  Russian 
country  house,  a  strange  figure  to  whom  pilgrims 
throng   from   every   quarter   of    the   globe.      All 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men  crowd  in  upon  him, 
but  even  though  the  rest  of  his  family  are  perhaps 
a  little  disconcerted  by  some  of  them,  Tolstoy  is 
kindly  and  welcoming  to  the  most  timid  of  all 
these  enthusiasts.     Year  after  year  the  European 
wave  of  worshippers  sweeps  over  the  steppes  to 
Yasnaya   Polyana,    and    year   after    year    Count 
Tolstoy   emits  to   them   the  spiritual   light   that 
is  in  him.     Glib  people  come  to  him  chattering 
their  facile  griefs,  comforting  themselves  by  their 
own   voices.     Some   Americans   have   even   been 
known  to  go  away  contented  that  they  have  been 
asked  to  do  so  by  Count  Tolstoy  !     But  all  have 
come  to  him  with  or  without  the  credentials  of 
intellectual  and  emotional  sincerity,  as  though  to 
the  very  fountain  source  of  all  human  guidance. 
They   have   sought    strength    from   his   spiritual 
vitality,  hope  from  his  reasoned  faith,  and  when 
they  have  been  honest  to  themselves  they  have 
found  consolation  in  this  pilgrimage.     For,  what- 
ever Count  Tolstoy  may  appear  to  his  critics,  he 
is  the  very  touchstone  of  other  people's  sincerity. 
Insincerity  withers  under  that  brooding  glance, 
and  one  need  pay  but  little  heed  to  that  quite 
other  picture  of  this  seer  at  which  Merezhkovsky 
has  more  than  hinted  in  that  too  brilliant  essay 
of   his.      He   pictures   Tolstoy   jumping   a   ditch 


Tolstoy  277 

hurriedly  in  order  to  avoid  the  importunities  of  a 
moujik,  who  having  learnt  of  the  Count's  creed  of 
giving  all  things  to  all  men,  is  asking  for  a  foal. 
"  F-o-a-1,"  repeats  the  peasant — "F-o-a-1";  and 
Tolstoy,  whose  creed  it  is  to  sell  all  that  he  has 
and  give  it  to  the  poor,  has  no  better  answer  to 
give  than  a  hurried  scamper  across  a  ditch. 

It  is  not,  however,  within  the  scope  of  this 
sketch  to  dwell  upon  that  endlessly  discussed 
antithesis  between  the  Tolstoy  of  the  Tolstoyan 
creed  and  the  Tolstoy  who  submits  to  the  inevit- 
able compromise  demanded  by  life  among  normal 
people.  It  is  as  idle  to  dwell  on  this  antithesis  as 
to  deny  it,  but  any  one  who  has  read  Tolstoy's 
works  must  realise  that  he  has  been  searching  for 
this  simplification  of  existence  almost  from  the 
dawn  of  consciousness.  It  is  of  no  mushroom 
origin,  but  has  been  growing  in  his  heart  from 
those  puzzled  nursery  days  when,  from  his  crib, 
he  weighed  old  Karl  Ivanovitch  and  found  him 
wanting,  found  him  even  disgusting  in  that  old 
morning  gown  and  tasselled  skull-cap  !  Tolstoy 
is  honest  with  others  and  with  himself  in  the  same 
sense  that  Irteniev  and  Olenine  and  Nekhliudov 
were  honest,  as  Pierre  and  Levin  were  honest, 
and,  to  probe  deeper  into  the  pressure  of  life,  as 
the  central  figures  of  the  "  Kreutzer  Sonata  "  and 
"The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch,"  victims  rather  than 
heroes,  are  honest.  It  is  of  course  also  true  that 
Tolstoy  has  not  been  what  he  has  wished  to  be, 


278  Two  Russian  Reformers 

has  not  done  even  what  he  has  wished  to  do,  any 
more  than  any  of  these.  But  the  gulf  between  the 
will  and  the  deed  is  something  very  different 
from  that  inner  falsehood  which  is  suggested  by 
that  story  of  Tolstoy  dodging  the  peasant  who 
pestered  him  for  a  foal.  In  view  of  the  known 
facts  one  refuses  to  allow  that  small  incident  to 
explain  a  great  man.  * 

From  the  time  that  he  settled  down  in  Yasnaya 
Polyana  Tolstoy  became  more  and  more  the 
typical  representative  of  Russian  literature  among 
his  own  people.  Like  Turgenev,  but  unlike 
Dostoievsky,  his  appeal  was  to  the  world  and 
not  merely  to  the  Russians.  Turgenev  stood 
for  Russia  in  the  West,  but  Tolstoy  attracted 
Europe  to  the  East.  Turgenev  became  a  citizen 
of  the  world  in  Paris  ;  Tolstoy  remained  one  in 
Yasnaya  Polyana.  Tolstoy  was  in  a  sense  the 
Russian  host  of  Europe,  just  as  in  a  similar  sense 
Turgenev  was  its  guest. 


CHAPTER    III 

TOLSTOY  lias  recorded  miniitch^  liis  im- 
pressions and  experiences  as  a  cliild,  as  a 
student,  and  as  a  soldier.  He  has  been 
even  more  explicit  in  recording  his  life  as  a  landed 
proprietor  and  head  of  a  family.  It  is  in  these 
experiences  and  in  those  of  his  work  as  an  educa- 
tional reformer  that  the  idea  of  simplification 
emerged  from  a  subconscious  desire  to  a  con- 
scious aim.  Long  before  his  "  conversion  "  he 
turned  to  the  moujik  for  guidance.  Often  in  the 
course  of  his  novels  he  describes  minutely  the 
men  at  work  in  the  fields  and  reproduces  with 
actual  physical  delight  the  swish  and  rhythm  of 
the  scythes  as  the}^  cut  through  the  long  dry 
grass.  These  country  scenes  are  taken  from  the 
very  routine  of  his  own  life.  "  If,"  writes  his 
brother-in-law,  "  as  sometimes  happened  in  our 
walk,  we  came  across  a  group  of  mowers,  he  liked 
to  take  the  scythe  from  the  labourer  who  seemed 
to  be  most  tired,  and  would  let  him  rest  whilst  he 
himself  worked.  On  such  occasions  he  has  more 
than  once  asked  me  how  it  comes  that,  in  spite  of 
our  well-developed  muscles,  we  cannot  mow  for  six 

«79 


28o  Two  Russian  Reformers 

days  running,  whilst  a  common  peasant,  who  sleeps 
on  damp  ground  and  lives  on  black  bread,  can 
easily  do  it.  And  he  generally  wound  up  the 
subject  by  exclaiming  *  You  just  try  it  and  see  !  ' 
And  as  he  left  the  meadow  he  would  pluck  from 
the  ricks  a  tuft  of  hay  and  literally  revel  in  its 
fragrant  smell." 

That  is  exactly  the  attitude  of  Levin,  and 
Behrs  tells  us  that  the  wooing  of  Tolstoy  and  his 
sister  was  exactly  that  of  Levin  and  Kate,  and 
that  they  even  used  the  initial  letters  in  which 
they  sought  to  express  their  mutual  love  just  as 
the  lovers  are  made  to  do  in  that  chapter  in 
"  Anna  Karanina.'"  Levin,  indeed,  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  Tolstoy  himself  in  the  same  sense  that 
Irteniev  and  Olenine  may  each  be  accepted  as 
Tolstoy,  that  is  to  say,  so  far  as  externals  are 
concerned,  only  up  to  a  certain  point.  But  so  far 
as  la  vie  interieure  is  concerned  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  each  of  these  characters  repre- 
sented the  particular  phase  of  spiritual  develop- 
ment through  which  Tolstoy  was  then  passing. 

But  before  the  phase  of  Levin  had  been  reached, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  Tolstoy  had  uttered 
the  strange  inward  gropings  of  his  heart  in  the 
incoherent,  typically  Russian  musings  of  Pierre  in 
"  War  and  Peace."  Tolstoy  married  Miss  Behrs 
on  September  23,  1863,  and  the  great  book  was 
commenced  almost  immediately.  It  occupied  eight 
years    of    Tolstoy's    literary    life,    and    his    wife 


Tolstoy  281 

copied  out  the  manuscript  seven  times.  In  this 
book,  more  persistently  even  than  in  "  Anna 
Karanina,"  the  love  of  family  life  finds  expression. 
Family  life  became  for  a  long  time  the  passion  of 
Count  Tolstoy's  life,  and  he  was  so  dominated  b}^ 
it  that  he  disliked  leaving  his  home  for  however 
brief  a  period.  "  When  it  was  absolutely  necessary 
for  him,"  writes  Behrs,  "to  go  to  Moscow,  either 
to  superintend  the  publication  of  his  newest  work 
or  to  engage  a  tutor  for  his  children,  he  used  to 
grumble  long  and  terribly  over  his  hard  fate. 
And  when  he  came  within  sight  of  his  home,  as 
he  returned  from  a  journey  or  from  shooting,  he 
would  often  express  his  anxiety  by  exclaiming 
*  I  only  hope  all  is  well  at  home  !  '  On  such 
occasions  he  never  failed  to  amuse  and  interest 
us  with  long  accounts  of  what  he  had  seen  and 
heard." 

But  just  as  he  was  to  pass  beyond  his  con- 
ception of  the  duty  of  the  soldier  to  that  more 
universal  duty  which  underlies  the  whole  concep- 
tion of  Christianity,  so  he  was  to  pass  beyond  the 
ideal  of  family  life  to  that  admittedly  impossible 
ideal  which  also  underlies  the  doctrine  of  Christi- 
anity, and  which  Tolstoy  himself  interprets  to 
the  last  limit  of  ruthless  logic  in  that  terrible 
indictment  of  the  average  man,  "The  Kreutzer 
Sonata." 

In  the  meantime  the  Tolstoy  of  "  War  and 
Peace  "  remained  in  all  essentials  the  Tolstoy  of 


282  Two  Russian  Reformers 

"A  Landed  Proprietor,"  "Sketches  of  Sebastopol," 
"  The  Cossacks,"  and  even  "  Childhood,  Boyhood, 
and  Youth."  He  is  still  steadfastly  examining 
men  and  things  for  himself,  prowling  restlessly, 
as  it  were,  round  the  zone  of  light  into  whose 
white  depths  he  was  eventually  to  penetrate. 
And  from  the  beginning  his  central  idea  can  be 
expressed  in  the  single  word — simplification.  For 
he  grasped  intuitively  the  fact  that  if  life  is  ever 
to  even  appear  reasonable,  there  must  be  first  that 
ruthless  stripping-off  of  alleged  virtues  and  alleged 
vices  alike  which  Lucian's  Charon  demanded  of 
those  wavering  ghosts  beside  the  Styx.  That  is 
what  the  latent  moralist  in  Tolstoy  always  de- 
manded, in  spite  of  those  imperiously  pagan 
claims  of  the  flesh.  That  he  demanded  from  the 
first,  in  his  record  of  youth  as  well  as  in  his  ultimate 
record  of  experience,  though  he  has  laid  emphasis 
on  the  change  of  the  ego  being  as  manifest  in  the 
spiritual  life  as  the  change  of  tissue  in  the  bodily 
life.  "  Of  my  birth,"  he  has  written,  "  my  child- 
hood, my  period  of  youth,  of  middle  age,  of  times 
not  very  far  past,  I  often  remember  nothing  at  all. 
But  if  I  do  recall  anything,  or  if  I  am  reminded  of 
something  in  my  past,  then  I  remember — and 
remember  it  almost  exactly  as  those  things  which 
are  told  me  about  others.  On  what  foundation, 
therefore,  do  I  affirm  that,  during  the  whole 
course  of  my  existence,  I  have  been  but  the 
one  I  ?  " 


Tolstoy  283 

All  through  his  life,  and  not  from  any  particular 
date,  Tolstoy  scrutinised  the  consciousness  of  this 
ego,  probing  it,  judging  it,  condemning  it.  He 
divined  at  last  what  has  remained  for  him  the 
central  light  because  from  the  very  beginning  he 
had  been  groping  towards  it.  And  when  he/ 
believed  that  the  clear  perspective  had  come  to/ 
him  at  last,  he  renounced  without  stint  or  limit] 
But  he  remained  one  and  the  same  Tolstoy) 
the  Tolstoy  who  had  clutched  longingly  at  all  the 
gracious  promise  of  the  world.  He  realised  the 
ideal  of  justice  to  man,  and  so  he  gave  up  the 
narrower  ideal  of  an  aristocracy.  VHe  realised 
the  ideal  of  justice  to  woman,  so  he  gave  the 
narrower  ideal  of  family  life.  [  He  realised  the 
ideal  of  justice  to  animals,  and  so  he  gave  up  the 
narrower  ideal  of  self-preservation  and  refused  to 
use  them  as  food.  Finally,  he  realised  the  ideal 
of  the  life  of  the  spirit,  and  so  he  gave  up  the 
narrower  ideal  of  the  cult  of  the  body.  His 
famous  and  pursuing  "  Rules  of  Conduct  "  were 
neither  eliminated  nor  changed,  but  merely 
precisely  defined.  They  are  three  in  number  : 
"  That  we  should  not  oppose  evil  with  force  ; 
that  we  should  not  consume  more  than  we  our- 
selves produce ;  that  men  and  women  should 
equally  practise  and  aspire  towards  purity  and 
chastity." 

Such  was  the  final  result  of  that  groping  after 
simplification  by  which  Tolstoy  was  liaunted  from 


284  Two  Russian  Reformers 

childhood,  the  simphfication  that  shows  itself 
in  "  The  Three  Deaths,"  which  illustrates  three 
phases  of  leaving  this  life — the  death  of  a  lady, 
the  death  of  a  peasant,  and  the  death  of  a  tree. 
This  idea  of  simplification,  indeed,  was  almost  as 
conspicuous  on  the  pagan  side  of  his  character 
as  on  the  Christian  ;  it  reveals  itself  no  less  cer- 
tainly in  the  study  of  Uncle  Eroshka  in  "  The 
Cossacks  "  than  in  the  portraiture  of  the  hero  of 
"  Resurrection."  For  this  idea  pervaded  not 
only  the  personal,  but  also  the  artistic  life  of 
Tolstoy,  for  whom  at  all  times,  and  not  after  a 
particular  date,  art  and  life  were  admittedly  an 
organic  unity.  All  through  the  broodings  of 
Pierre  in  "  War  and  Peace  "  one  finds  that  per- 
sistent, subconscious  search  for  some  inner  solace 
beneath  the  surface  of  life.  It  has  been  always 
an  instinct  with  Tolstoy  to  penetrate  through  the 
trappings  of  the  outer  pageant,  however  magnifi- 
cent, in  search  of  that  simplicity  which  is  the 
kernel  of  truth.  An  aristocrat  by  birth  and  by 
training,  he  was  to  find  in  war  the  soul  of  the 
army,  not  among  the  generals  and  staff-officers,  but 
among  the  common  soldiers.  That  was  the  lesson 
he  had  learnt  in  Sebastopol,  and  he  was  to  interpret 
it  again  in  "  War  and  Peace." 

Afterwards,  in  his  second  and  yet  more  sombre 
masterpiece,  he  had  already  commenced  to  search 
humbly  for  wisdom  from  the  lips  of  the  moujik. 
At  that  time  he  was  in  everybody's  opinion  Count 


Tolstoy  385 

Tolstoy  the  novelist  and  citizen  of  the  world,  but 
he  was  none  the  less  essentially  the  man  who 
would  one  day  realise  that  education  in  the 
ordinary  sense  was  useless  and  even  negative, 
and  who  would  thrust  scornfully  aside  even  art 
itself  as  a  hindrance  to  the  soul's  growth.  Levin 
would  inevitably  become  the  Tolstoy  who,  on 
being  consulted  by  his  son  as  to  what  career  he 
should  adopt,  advised  him  to  go  into  the  fields  and 
work  side  by  side  with  the  moujik.  In  charity, 
and  particularly  in  that  actual  though  often 
ridiculed  generosity  of  doing  something  for  one's 
neighbour  with  one's  own  hands,  Levin  was  the 
veritable  prototype  of  the  as  yet  unacknowledged 
reformer.  "  The  Count,"  writes  Behrs,  "  invited 
me  to  go  with  him  into  the  forest,  and  we  two 
having  taken  our  axes  with  us,  cut  down  some 
trees,  lopped  off  the  branches,  and  piled  the  logs 
in  order  on  the  peasant's  cart.  I  must  confess 
I  worked  with  a  hearty  good  will,  and  experienced 
a  pleasure  in  the  work  I  had  never  known  before. 
This  may  have  been  because  I  was  so  completely 
under  the  influence  of  my  brother-in-law,  or 
simply  because  I  was  working  for  a  sick,  broken- 
down  fellow-creature.  All  the  time  we  worked 
the  poor  peasant's  face  wore  an  expression  of  quiet 
gratitude.  Leo  Nicholaevitch,  noting  my  frame 
of  mind,  purposely  rewarded  my  zeal  by  allotting 
to  me  the  harder  share  of  the  work.  And  when 
we  had  finished  and  sent  the  moujik  away  rejoicing 


286  Two  Russian  Reformers 

he  turned  to  me  and  said  :  '  Is  it  possible  to 
doubt  the  necessity  of  helping  our  neighbour  in 
distress,  or  the  joy  such  help  brings  with  it?'" 
Levin  might  have  uttered  these  words,  and  most 
certainly  Levin  would  have  felled  the  tree  for  his 
brother  the  moujik  without  bothering  his  head 
about  the  fact  that  from  the  practical  standpoint 
he  was  rendering  him  but  a  small  and  fugitive 
service. 

The  change  to  definite  Christianity,  however, 
involved  certain  definite  renunciations  in  his  outer 
life.  For  example,  he  gave  up  smoking,  wine, 
and  sport,  to  name  only  a  few  of  the  ordinary 
distractions  of  the  early  days.  His  brother-in- 
law  comments  upon  this  outward  change  :  "  Only 
a  genial  nature  could  submit  to  a  change  so  com- 
plete as  that  undergone  by  Leo  Nicholaevitch  in 
obedience  to  the  creed  he  has  finally  accepted. 
The  change  that  has  taken  place  in  his  entire 
personality  within  these  last  ten  years  is  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word  a  full  and  radical  change. 
Not  only  has  his  life  and  his  relation  to  men  and 
creatures  changed,  but  we  remark  a  similar  change 
in  his  sphere  and  mode  of  thought.  And  if  he 
still  remains  faithful  to  some  of  his  earlier  views, 
such  as  his  antagonism  to  progress  and  civilisation, 
these  views  have  no  longer  the  same  basis  and 
foundation."  The  goal  of  Count  Tolstoy,  his 
brother-in-law  notes,  has  become  the  ideal  of  love 
for  one's  fellow-man.     But  it  is  the  same  Tolstoy, 


Tolstoy  287 

and  he  cannot  wholly  abandon  vehement  censure, 
censure  which  is  not  in  conformity  with  his  later 
views,  but  in  deep  conformity  with  his  unalterable 
character.  "  And  if  I  may  be  pardoned  the 
paradox,"  comments  Behrs,  "  I  should  say  that 
his  error  consists  in  thinking  it  to  be  a  departure 
from  his  views,  though  he  does  it  for  the  sake  of 
the  idea  itself,  when  he  sharply  condemns  another 
for  his  ill  deeds."  This  is  of  course  true,  but  only 
a  part  of  the  truth.  Had  Merezhkovsky  in  re- 
viewing Count  Tolstoy,  instead  of  searching  always 
for  the  pagan  note,  searched  for  the  note  of  sim- 
plification, to  be  found  equally  on  the  pagan  as 
on  the  Christian  side,  he  would  have  found  the 
real  link  between  the  Tolstoy  of  "  Resurrection  " 
and  the  Tolstoy  of  "  Childhood,  Boyhood  and 
Youth." 

As  one  surveys  Tolstoy's  contribution  to  the 
world  of  thought,  one  realises  how  this  process 
of  stripping  off  first  one  idle  accessory  and  then 
another  encroached  upon  all  other  ideas.  It  is 
possible  to  sustain  life  without  feeding  upon  one's 
fellow-animals.  It  is  possible  to  sustain  bodily 
health  without  slaughtering  them  for  amusement. 
It  is  possible  to  live  reasonably  without  dissoci- 
ating oneself  from  the  great  mass  of  one's  fellow- 
men.  It  is  possible  to  feed  the  mind  without 
priding  oneself  upon  the  enjoyment  of  artistic 
pleasures  which  are  meaningless  to  the  great 
majority  of  mankind.     Above  all,  it  is  possible  to 

18 


288  Two  Russian  Reformers 

maintain  the  dignity  of  human  life  without  the 
organised  and  systematic  deception  of  women. 
"  In  nearly  every  romance,"  says  Posdniescheff 
in  the  "  Kreutzer  Sonata,"  *'  the  feelings  of  the 
hero  are  portrayed  in  detail,  the  ponds  and  copses 
round  which  he  walks  in  pensive  thought  are 
described ;  but  whilst  dwelling  on  his  great  love 
for  the  heroine,  the  novelist  tells  us  nothing  about 
the  life  he  led  before,  nor  is  there  a  word  said  of 
his  visits  to  certain  disreputable  houses  or  his  gay 
adventures  with  ladies'  maids,  cooks,  and  strange 
women.  Or  if  there  be  such  indelicate  novels 
where  we  are  told  all  this,  the  greatest  care  is 
taken  to  keep  them  out  of  the  hands  of  those 
to  whom  such  knowledge  is  most  necessary — un- 
married girls.  And  they  are  so  well  trained  in 
this  hypocrisy,  that  at  last,  like  the  English, 
they  begin  actually  to  believe  that  we  are  all 
moral  people  and  that  we  live  in  a  moral 
world." 

Nothing  illustrates  better  the  profound  difference 
between  the  realism  of  Russian  literature  and  the 
methods  of  either  French  or  English  fiction  than 
this  powerful  book.  A  typical  French  realist 
would  have  described  minutely  every  detail  of 
this  crime  passionnel.  And  he  would  have  shown, 
as  under  X-rays,  the  elemental  human  motives  at 
work,  revealing  the  action  as  inevitable  from  the 
first,  imperceptibly  led  up  to  by  a  long  series  of 
infinitesimal  causes,  every  one  of  which  had  its 


Tolstoy  289 

roots  in  the  essentials  of  human  nature.  If  he 
were  a  man  of  genius  there  would  be  even  life  in 
the  picture,  and  the  murderer  would  remain  a 
man  and  the  adulteress  a  woman.  But  his 
tendency  would  inevitably  be  to  accentuate  the 
forbidden  and  to  throw  limelight  on  the  illicit, 
not  merely  because  these  are  integral  portions  of 
the  picture,  but  to  no  small  extent  because  they 
are,  from  the  English  standpoint,  forbidden  and 
illicit. 

The  tendency  in  this  country,  however,  would 
be  wholly  in  the  opposite  direction.  It  is  almost 
inconceivable  that  an  English  writer  should  pro- 
duce such  a  story  without  somebody  being  labelled 
definitely  in  the  right  and  somebody  else  labelled 
definitely  in  the  wrong.  So  far  as  the  great  bulk 
of  our  fiction  deals  at  all  with  the  problems  of 
life  as  opposed  to  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  island, 
what  Voltaire  said  about  English  puddings  is 
still  more  true  about  English  fiction.  And  the  one 
sauce  of  our  fiction  is  that  of  arranged  propriety. 
While  the  Frenchman  perhaps  too  persistently 
ignores  any  lesson  whatever  in  a  work  of  art,  his 
English  confrere  teaches  as  naturally  as  he  draws 
breath.  And  he  would  arrange  this  story  of 
crime  and  passion  so  clearly  that  in  the  end  we 
should  realise  the  precise  number  of  years  of  penal 
servitude  that  should  be  inflicted  upon  this  victim 
of  human  nature. 

But  the   Russian  psychologist   is  indebted   to 


290  Two  Russian  Reformers 

neither  Frcncli  nor  English  methods.  He  does 
not  accentuate  anything  merely  because  con- 
ventionality would  exclude  it,  nor  does  he  exclude 
anything  through  English  maiivaise  honte.  He 
draws  his  picture  such  as  it  is,  and  if  he  is  primarily 
an  artist,  like  Turgenev,  he  will  leave  it  to  present 
its  own  appeal.  But  if  he  is  primarily  a  moralist, 
like  Tolstoy,  he  will  produce  not  only  a  more 
powerful  and  earnest  picture  than  the  Frenchman, 
but  an  incomparably  deeper  lesson  than  any  of 
those  priggish  little  ohiter  dicta  with  which  Eng- 
lish fiction  is  saturated.  It  is  the  Frenchman's 
mission  to  strip  life  of  the  decorous  with  a  too 
obvious  grin  at  the  nudity  that  he  reveals.  It  is 
the  Englishman's  privilege  to  swathe  and  bandage 
further  the  drapery  of  life  so  as  to  add  to  the 
comfort  of  his  own  make-belief.  But  it  is  for  the 
Russian  to  examine  truth  steadfastly  as  it  seems 
to  him,  neither  with  the  Frenchman's  cynical 
grin  nor  the  Englishman's  sheepish  smile.  The 
late  Mr.  Leckie  alluded  to  a  certain  section  of  the 
community  as  the  preservers  of  our  wives  and 
daughters,  a  point  of  view  which  may  be  accepted 
as  symbolic  of  that  whole  gospel  of  comfort  which 
for  centuries  Anglo-Saxons  have  confused  with 
piety.  "  It  cannot  be  right,"  urges  Count  Tolstoy, 
"  that  certain  people  should  be  allowed,  on  the 
plea  that  it  is  necessary  for  their  health,  to  destroy 
others  body  and  soul,  any  more  than  we  should 
think  of  allowing  a  privileged  class  to  drink  the 


Tolstoy  291 

blood  of  llicir  poorer  neiglibours  on  the  pretext 
that  it  was  necessary  for  tlieir  health." 

In  reality  the  "  Kreutzer  Sonata"  is  a  normal 
development  of   "  My  Husband  and  1,"  just  as 
"  War  and  Peace  "  is  a  normal  development  of 
"  Sketches  of  Sebastopol  "   and   "  The  Death  of 
Ivan  Ilyitch  "  is  a  normal  development  of  "  Three 
Deaths."     Even  in  childhood  Tolstoy  had  desired      1 
to  peer  beneath  the  surface  of  things,  and  in  his       ! 
records  of  youth   he  wrote  down   fearlessly  life       i 
as  it  had  seemed  to  him  in  those  early  years  of       ) 
illusion.     But  he  was  to  go  deeper  than  that  and 
farther.     His  scrutiny,  from  the  beginning  search- 
ing   and    alert,    was    to    become    menacing    and 
terrible.     He  was  to  reveal  war  as  no  one  had  ever 
realised  it ;  he  was  to  reveal  death  as  no  one  had 
ever  dared  to  think  of  it,  and  in  the  "  Krcutzer 
Sonata  "  he  was  to  unveil  in  all  its  skeleton  naked- 
ness the  fear  of  life.     All  these  effects  were  gained 
not  by  adding  accessories,  but  by  stripping  from 
manhood   the  last    deception,   from   life    its   last 
vestige  of  glamour,  and  from  death  its  last  covering 
of  dignity.    Tolstoy  was  a  moralist  certainly,  but  he 
was  none  the  less  a  Russian  realist,  and  from  his 
first  book  to  his  last  there  has  not  been  and  could 
never  be  any  line  of  demarcation.     For,  besides 
Tolstoy  the  artist  and  Tolstoy  the  moralist,  there 
is  also  Tolstoy  the  man  who  has  remained  un- 
changed and  unchangeable.     And  in  Tolstoy  the 
man  the  old  pagan  vigour  persists  even  in  his 


292  Two  Russian  Reformers 

latest  works  no  less  surely  than  the  brooding 
spirit  of  Christianity  can  be  found  lurking  in  every 
page  of  his  early  books.  This  pagan  vigour,  in 
fact,  reveals  itself  in  that  very  "  Confession  "  in 
which  the  great  Russian  artist  renounces  his 
former  life  and  all  its  works. 


CHAPTER    IV 

IN  "My  Confession"  Tolstoy  treats  specifically 
upon  that  pause  in  his  life  during  which 
he  weighed  all  human  knowledge  and  found 
it  wanting.  In  this  book  too,  with  a  deeper 
consciousness  than  in  his  record  of  "  Youth,"  he 
confesses  to  the  ordinary  failings  of  youth,  its 
facile  mockery,  its  devastating  vanity,  its  easily 
swayed  emotion.  But  even  in  this  volume,  per- 
haps the  most  honest  revelation  of  the  human 
heart  ever  penned  by  man,  Tolstoy,  in  the  very 
midst  of  his  self-condemnation,  bears  witness  to 
his  early  gropings  after  some  meaning  in  the 
shifting  panorama  of  life  :  "I  honestly  desired 
to  make  myself  a  good  and  virtuous  man,  but  I 
was  young,  I  had  passions,  and  I  stood  alone, 
altogether  alone  in  my  search  after  virtue.  Every 
time  I  tried  to  express  the  longings  of  my  heart 
for  a  truly  virtuous  life,  I  was  met  with  contempt 
and  derisive  laughter  ;  but  directly  I  gave  way 
to  the  lowest  of  my  passions  I  was  praised  and 
encouraged.  I  found  ambition,  love  of  power. 
love  of  gain,  lechery,  pride,  anger,  vengeance,  held 
in  high  esteem.     I  gave  way  to  these  passions, 

293 


294  Two  Russian  Reformers 

and  becoming  like  unto  my  elders  I  felt  that  the 
place  which  I  filled  in  the  world  satisfied  those 
around  me."  He  was  surrounded  by  worldly 
people.  Even  his  aunt,  a  kind-hearted  woman  of 
the  world  who  was  devoted  to  him,  used  to  say  to 
him,  as  she  honestly  believed  for  his  own  good, 
**  Rien  ne  forme  un  jeune  homme,  comme  une 
liaison  avec  une  femme  comme  il  faut."  She 
would  urge  him  to  become  an  adjutant,  to  the 
Emperor  if  possible,  and  would  often  express  the 
hope  that  her  favourite  nephew  might  capture  an 
heiress.  English  commentators  have  shown  the 
whites  of  their  eyes  with  a  quite  exceptional  relish 
over  these  worldly  but  quite  ordinary  views,  which, 
incidentally,  are  by  no  means  confined  to  Russia 
or  to  the  youth  of  Count  Tolstoy.  They  have 
shuddered,  too,  with  sanctimonious  curiosity  at  the 
fierce  indictment  which  follows  :  "I  cannot  now 
recall  those  years  without  a  painful  feeling  of 
horror  and  loathing.  I  put  men  to  death  in  war, 
I  fought  duels  to  slay  others,  I  lost  at  cards, 
wasted  my  substance  wrung  from  the  sweat  of  the 
peasants,  punished  the  latter  cruelly,  rioted  with 
loose  women  and  deceived  men.  Lying,  robbery, 
adultery  of  all  kinds,  drunkenness,  violence,  and 
murder  all  committed  by  me,  not  one  crime 
omitted,  and  yet  I  was  not  less  considered  by  my 
equals  a  comparatively  moral  man.  Such  was 
my  life  during  ten  years."  Thus  Count  Tolstoy 
writes   on   himself   in   brief   concentrated  state- 


Tolstoy  295 

merit  of  fact,  utterly  devoid  of  the  unction  which 
Rousseau  so  often  mingles  with  the  self-abasement 
of  confession. 

And  when  success  came  to  Tolstoy  as  an  author 
he  was  as  little  deceived  by  that  phase  as  by  any 
other  phase  of  his  earlier  life,  though  at  the  begin- 
ning he  seems  to  have  believed  himself  to  be  what 
from  the  first  he  aimed  at  being,  a  teacher.  "  In 
the  second,  however,  and  especially  in  the  third 
year,"  he  writes,  "  of  this  way  of  life,  I  began 
to  doubt  the  infallibility  of  the  doctrine,  and  to 
examine  it  more  closely."  This  close  merciless 
examination  of  himself  was  inevitable  with  Tolstoy 
at  every  period  of  his  life.  When  he  was  abroad 
he  witnessed  an  execution  at  Paris,  and  in  his 
record  of  his  impressions  of  that  incident  there 
lies  the  whole  secret  of  his  habit  of  thought : 
"  When  I  saw  the  head  divided  from  the  body, 
and  heard  the  sound  with  wliich  they  fell  sepa- 
rately into  the  box,  I  understood,  not  with  my 
reason,  but  with  my  whole  being,  that  no  theory 
of  the  wisdom  of  all  established  things,  nor  of 
progress,  could  justify  such  an  act  ;  and  that  if 
all  the  men  in  the  world  from  the  day  of  creation, 
by  whatever  theory,  had  found  this  thing  neces- 
sary, it  was  not  so  ;  it  was  a  bad  thing,  and  that 
therefore  I  must  judge  of  what  was  right  and 
necessary,  not  by  what  men  said  and  did,  not  by 
progress,  but  what  I  felt  to  be  true  in  my  heart." 
That  is  the  very  core  of  Tolstoy,  and  at  no  period 


296  Two  Russian  Reformers 

of  his  life,  not  even  in  the  facile  period  of  youth, 
could  he  ever  accept  the  dictated  point  of  view 
which  comes  so  naturally  to  Anglo-Saxons.  And 
so,  not  at  a  particular  crisis  of  his  life,  but  almost 
at  the  very  dawn  of  his  reasoning  concerning  life's 
enigma,  he  came  to  distrust  the  theory  of  progress 
or  at  least  the  surface  values  of  progress  with 
which  the  people  around  him  were  so  content. 
"  Everything  develops,  and  I  myself  develop  as 
well ;  and  why  this  is  so  will  one  day  become 
apparent,"  became  his  formula.  Profoundly  dis- 
trustful of  the  literary  teaching  of  his  confreres 
as  well  as  of  his  own,  he  applied  himself  to  the 
education  of  the  peasants  on  the  broadest  and 
simplest  lines. 

But  neither  in  this  pursuit  nor  in  any  other 
could  Tolstoy  discover  any  underlying  meaning 
of  life.  How  then  could  he  teach  others  when  he 
had  failed  to  learn  anything  of  any  value  himself  ? 
The  sense  of  want  became  more  and  more  an 
obsession,  until  he  realised  that  life  had  no  mean- 
ing for  him  whatever.  Then,  having  discovered 
that  life  was  meaningless,  he  realised  that  it 
should  end  :  "I  was  unwilling  to  act  hastily, 
only  because  I  had  determined  first  to  clear 
away  the  confusion  of  my  thoughts,  and  that  once 
done,  I  could  always  kill  myself  ;  I  was  happy, 
yet  I  hid  away  a  cord  to  avoid  being  tempted 
to  hang  myself  by  it  to  one  of  the  pegs  between 
the  cupboards  of  my  study,  where  I  undressed 


Tolstoy  297 

alone  every  evening,  and  ceased  carrying  a  gun 
because  it  offered  too  easy  a  way  of  getting  rid  of 
life.  I  knew  not  what  I  wanted  ;  I  was  afraid  of 
life,  I  shrank  from  it,  and  yet  there  was  something 
I  hoped  for  from  it."  He  realised  now,  before 
he  had  reached  his  fiftieth  year,  now  when  he  was 
surrounded  by  a  devoted  wife  and  loving  children, 
now  when  he  was  rich  and  respected  and  success- 
ful, that  life  was  valueless  and  without  meaning. 
He  realised  that  it  was  only  bearable  under  the 
intoxication  of  youth's  illusions.  He  had  aroused 
himself  from  this  intoxication  at  last,  and  now  he 
knew  ;  never  again  could  he  be  deceived.  And 
he  goes  on  to  cite  that  terrible  Eastern  fable  of 
the  traveller  in  the  steppes  who,  in  order  to  avoid 
a  wild  beast  that  has  attacked  him,  lets  himself 
down  into  a  dried-up  well.  At  the  bottom  of  the 
well  there  is  a  dragon,  for  fear  of  which  he  dares 
not  descend  any  farther,  and  so  he  clings  to  a 
branch  of  a  wild  plant  that  is  growing  along  the 
wall.  Then  suddenly,  as  he  clings  desperately 
between  the  two  dangers,  he  sees  two  mice 
ceaselessly  nibbling  at  the  trunk  of  the  tree  on 
which  he  depends.  Nothing  can  save  him  now, 
but  still  he  clings  and  still  he  looks  around  in 
search  of  some  faint  hope.  And,  gazing  around, 
he  detects  on  the  leaves  near  him  a  few  drops  of 
honey,  and  stretches  out  his  tongue  avidly  to 
lick  them.  "  Thus  do  I  cling  to  the  branch  of 
life,  knowing  that  the  dragon  of  death  inevitably 


298  Two  Russian  Reformers 

awaits  me,  ready  to  tear  me  to  pieces,  and  I 
cannot  understand  why  such  tortures  have  fallen 
to  my  lot.  I  strive  also  to  suck  honey  which  once 
comforted  me,  but  it  palls  on  my  palate,  while 
the  white  mouse  and  the  black,  day  and  night, 
gnaw  through  the  branch  to  which  I  cling.  I  see 
the  dragon  too  plainly,  and  the  honey  is  no  longer 
sweet.  I  see  the  dragon  from  whom  there  is  no 
escape,  and  the  mice,  and  I  cannot  turn  my  eyes 
away  from  them.  It  is  no  fable,  but  a  living  un- 
deniable truth  to  be  understood  of  all  men.  The 
former  delusion  of  happiness  in  life  which  hid  from 
me  the  horror  of  the  dragon  no  longer  deceives 
me." 

In  his  hour  of  need  he  turned  from  one  source 
of  theoretical  knowledge  to  the  other,  but  each 
in  turn  failed  him.  Appearances  can  never  more 
deceive  the  ruthless  scrutiny  of  this  man  who 
is  no  longer  self-deceived  :  "  Thus,  however  I 
examine  and  twist  the  theoretical  replies  of 
philosophy,  I  never  receive  an  answer  to  my 
question  ;  and  that,  not  as  the  sphere  of  experi- 
mental knowledge,  because  the  answer  does  not 
relate  to  the  question,  but  because  here,  although 
great  mental  labour  has  been  applied  directly  to 
the  question,  there  is  no  answer,  and  instead  of 
one  I  get  back  my  own  question  repeated  in  a 
more  complicated  form."  The  dilemma  became 
more  and  more  oppressive,  as  more  and  more 
clearly  this  honest  intelligence  realised  that  from 


Tolstoy  299 

the  knowledge  implanted  in  man  by  reason  he 
could  obtain  nothing  but  the  denial  of  life,  and 
from  the  unreasoning  knowledge  of  faith  nothing 
but  the  denial  of  reason. 

But  little  by  little  it  dawned  upon  him  that  in 
this  unreasoning  knowledge  of  faith  alone  was  a 
possibiUty  of  continuing  to  live,  and  he  grasped 
his  vital  formula,  "  Without  Faith  there  is  no 
Life."  It  had  become  clear  to  him  that  the  wisdom 
of  all  men,  from  Solomon  to  Schopenhauer,  was 
futile  because  it  led  logically  to  the  denial  of  life, 
and  yet  they  who  had  acquired  it  themselves 
continued  to  live.  He  had  arrived  at  last  at  a 
recognition  of  the  clearly-defined  limitations  of 
human  reasoning  :  "I  understood  that  all  our 
arguments  turned  in  a  charmed  circle,  like  a 
cogwheel  the  teeth  of  which  no  longer  catch  in 
one  another.  However  much  and  however  well  we 
reason,  we  get  no  answer  to  our  question ;  it  will 
always  be  0  =  0,  and  consequently  our  method  is 
probably  wrong." 

Others  beside  Tolstoy  sought  remorselessly  for 
the  meaning  of  hfe  ;  others  have  realised  the 
truth  of  that  Eastern  fable,  and  have  detected 
the  mice  gnawing  at  the  very  roots  of  what  alone 
preserved  them  from  the  dragon's  jaws.  Others, 
too,  have  experienced  that  hypnotism  of  the  fear 
of  life  which  spoils  the  momentary  sweetness  of 
its  honey.  But  it  was  for  Count  Tolstoy  to  write 
these  things  down  as  though  they  had  never  been 


300  Two  Russian  Reformers 

written  before,  to  state  the  sinister  equation  0  =  0 
as  though  it  had  never  been  arrived  at  before,  to 
clutch  at  Faith  as  though  throughout  the  cen- 
turies no  other  despairing  human  soul  had  ever 
clutched  at  it.  And  because  Tolstoy  remained  a 
powerful  artist,  even  in  the  very  act  of  renouncing 
art  he  has  given  to  his  "Confession"  a  far  wider 
significance  than  that  of  individual  conviction. 
It  is  not  merely  a  human  document  of  faith,  but 
a  work  of  art  produced  by  a  profound  moralist 
who,  from  the  very  beginning,  had  brought  intel- 
lectual truthfulness  to  bear  upon  his  interpretation 
of  life. 

He  had  found  at  last  what  he  had  been  groping 
for  since  childhood.  From  a  darkened  room  he 
had  stumbled  suddenly  into  the  white  light.  But 
he  had  remained  the  same  Tolstoy  who  long  ago, 
in  the  midst  of  robust  physical  enjoyment,  had 
detected  the  chilling  nearness  of  death,  and  in  the 
midst  of  the  ordinary  daily  routine  the  secretive 
fear  of  life.  Certainly  the  ship  has  come  into  the 
harbour  at  last,  but  it  is  the  same  ship. 

It  is  true  that  in  the  work  of  Tolstoy  one  can  see 
the  encroachment  of  the  inner  life  upon  the  outer. 
But  that  outer  life  has  been  from  the  beginning 
so  vitally  realised  that  it  can  never  be,  in  his 
most  consciously  didactic  work,  even  partially 
suppressed.  He  has  lived  to  condemn  his  own 
masterpieces,  but  in  that  very  condemnation  there 
vibrates  the   old   pagan   power   that   had   given 


Tolstoy  301 

life  to  that  which  he  now  condemns.  Art  is 
greater  than  the  individual,  greater  even  than 
the  moraUst,  and  it  may  be  that  that  supreme 
artist,  Turgenev,  was  wrong  when  on  his  death- 
bed he  implored  Tolstoy  to  return  to  literature. 
For,  at  no  time  did  the  author  of  "Anna  Karanina  " 
abandon  literature  in  spite  of  his  verbal  renuncia- 
tion. 

What  Tolstoy  contributes  to  literature  with 
almost  Shakespearian  abundance  and  amplitude 
of  power  is  the  quahty  of  intellectual  truthfulness, 
such  truthfulness  as  is  almost  alien  from  Anglo- 
Saxon  habits  of  thought.  He  has  contributed  this 
quality  in  his  early  works  ;  he  has  contributed  it 
in  his  masterpieces  ;  and  he  has  continued  to 
contribute  it  in  the  very  least  of  his  tracts  for  the 
service  of  the  Russian  people.  It  was  not  in  the 
nature  of  things  that  he  should  ever  be  content  to 
infuse  into  art  that  sad  perfume  of  life  which 
Turgenev  distilled  from  the  very  ashes  of  regret. 
It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  things  that  this  groping 
and  yet  trustful  intelligence  should  be  ever  con- 
tented with  that  attitude  of  ironical  suspicion 
with  which  Turgenev  defended  the  isolation  of  his 
soul.  Nor  could  he,  like  his  older  rival,  accept 
civilisation  as  at  least  a  solace,  thankful,  as 
Turgenev  was  thankful,  for  the  very  croupier  as 
its  lowest  symbol.  For  Tolstoy  a  meaning  of 
life  was  as  necessary  in  one  sense  as  oxygen  in 
another.     It  would  have  been  impossible  for  him 


302  Two  Russian  Reformers 

to  continue  to  live  with  that  deep-rooted  sus- 
picion of  an  all-merciful  Providence  which  had 
permeated  and,  in  a  sense,  withered  the  very  youth 
of  Turgenev. 

But  though  Tolstoy  had  arrived  at  the  necessity 
of  faith,  he  was  in  reality  little  beyond  the  stage 
of  Pierre  in  "  War  and  Peace  "  or  Levin  in  **  Anna 
Karanina."  He  was  willing  to  embrace  any 
form  of  faith  that  was  not  an  absolute  denial  of 
human  reason,  but  his  heart  was  admittedly  none 
the  lighter.  From  the  leaders  of  science  and 
thought  he  had  turned  to  the  leaders  of  religion 
and  faith,  but  from  them  he  learned  little,  beyond 
their  innumerable  contradictions  of  each  other. 
And  then,  at  last,  just  as  Pierre  had  done,  just  as 
Levin  had  done,  and  not  at  all  in  obedience  to  any 
strange  and  sudden  inspiration,  he  turned  to  the 
Russian  people  for  an  answer  to  the  enigma  of 
human  existence.  Then,  indeed,  a  great  change, 
which  was  in  reality  only  the  maturity  of  a  long 
doubtful  growth,  came  consciously  at  last ;  it  was 
the  fruition  of  all  those  moralising  broodings  of 
Irteniev,  Olenine,  Nezhdinhov,  Pierre,  Levin  and 
so  many  others,  those  broodings  which  from  the 
very  first  are  inseparable  from  the  artistic  work 
of  Tolstoy,  who,  now  definitely  abandoning  the 
philosophers,  had,  like  his  own  heroes,  humbly 
approached  the  moujiks :  "I  began  to  grow 
attached  to  these  men.  The  more  I  learned  of 
their  lives,  the  lives  of  the  living  and  of  the  dead 


\ 


TOLSTOY    AT    WORK. 


303 


Tolstoy  305 

of  whom  I  read  and  heard,  the  more  I  Hked  them, 
and  the  easier  I  felt  it  §>o  to  live.  I  lived  in  this 
way  during  two  years,  and  then — symptoms  of 
which  I  had  always  dimly  felt — the  life  of  my  own 
circle  of  rich  and  learned  men  not  only  became 
repulsive,  but  lost  all  meaning  whatever.  All 
actions,  our  reasoning,  our  science  and  art,  all 
appeared  to  me  in  a  new  light.  I  understood 
that  it  was  all  child's  play,  that  it  was  useless  to 
seek  a  meaning  in  it.  The  life  of  the  working 
classes  of  the  whole  of  mankind,  of  those  that 
create  life,  appeared  to  me  in  its  true  significance. 
I  understood  that  this  was  life  itself,  and  that  the 
meaning  given  to  this  life  was  a  true  one,  and  I 
accepted  it." 

And  when  the  change  came  and  was  accepted 
as  a  new  and  complete  transformation  of  every- 
thing that  had  gone  before,  Tolstoy,  even  in  this 
book  which  is  the  accepted  demarcation  between 
the  old  life  and  the  new,  admits,  even  in  regard 
to  the  exhilaration  of  spiritual  discovery,  that  the 
sensation  produced  upon  him  was  not  wholly  un- 
familiar :  "It  was  strange,  but  this  feeling  of  the 
glow  of  life  was  no  new  sensation  ;  it  was  old 
enough,  for  I  had  been  led  away  by  it  in  the  earlier 
part  of  my  life.  I  returned,  as  it  were,  to  the 
past,   to  childhood,   and  to  my  youth." 

What  he  had  accepted  unconsciously  then,  he 
accepted  consciously  now,  and  there  was  in 
reality  no  inner  difference  between  the  Tolstoy 

19 


3o6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

who  had  groped  dimly  and  the  Tolstoy  who  now 
saw  with  clear  eyes.  He  had  only  traversed 
the  path  to  which  in  every  one  of  his  works  he 
persistently  reverts,  and  the  ultimate  lesson  is 
only  the  logical  conclusion  of  Pierre's  gropings 
and  Levin's  meditations.  Tolstoy  returned  to 
the  simplicity  of  the  moujik  because  he  believed 
that  civilisation,  far  from  being  a  development 
in  spiritual  life,  was  in  reality  a  hindrance.  And 
it  is  this  distrust  of  civilisation,  the  one  gift  in 
which  the  suspicious  Turgenev  really  did  believe, 
that  has  permeated  the  whole  of  Tolstoy's  work, 
from  that  first  book  written  in  the  Caucasus  down 
to  this  world-known  renunciation  of  the  pride  of 
life  which  made  so  many  exclaim  in  every  capital 
of  Europe,  "  There  is  no  more  Tolstoy." 

In  reality  there  is  no  mystery  at  all.  In  reality 
Count  Tolstoy  has  survived  by  reason  of  the  same 
qualities  that  made  an  obscure  young  artillery 
soldier  famous  in  a  moment.  Turgenev,  who  was 
to  no  small  extent  a  mystery,  even  to  himself, 
has  been  carelessly  labelled  as  a  man  who  did  this 
but  refused  to  do  that,  a  man  who  grasped  this 
side  of  Russian  life  but  remained  always  a  stranger 
to  new  types  and  new  ideas  of  his  country.  In 
brief,  they  have  explained  the  really  enigmatic 
Turgenev  who  said  very  little  about  himself,  while 
they  have  insisted  upon  regarding  as  a  mystery 
Count  Tolstoy  who  has  been  explaining  himself 
all  his  life. 


CHAPTER    V 

TOLSTOY  wrote  "  The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch  " 
in  1884-86  and  the  "  Kreutzer  Sonata  " 
in  1890.  In  each  of  these  works  the  old 
power  is  displayed  with  all  the  old  ruthless  honesty 
and  that  combination  of  observation  and  intro- 
spection which  had  been  peculiar  to  the  novelist's 
early  work.  But  in  the  so-called  second  period 
of  Tolstoy's  literary  life  there  is  only  one  book 
which  even  suggests  the  vast  scale  of  "  War  and 
Peace  "  or  "  Anna  Karanina."  Written  in  1899- 
1900,  "  Resurrection  "  is  an  unconscious  resume 
not  only  of  the  literary  art  but  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  its  author.  Everything  is  in  these  pages,  which 
are,  however,  permeated  by  the  consciousness  of 
a  changed  perspective,  the  consciousness  of  look- 
ing backward  instead  of  forward.  Youth  itself, 
viewed  from  this  changed  perspective,  lives  again 
in  Nekhludoff's  visit  to  his  aunts  on  that  wet 
Good  Friday  on  which  his  spiritual  manhood 
weakened  before  the  insistent  claims  of  the  flesh. 
All  through  those  Easter  days  the  sinister  allure- 
ment hovers  about  that  quiet  country  house,  even 
when  the  young  officer  kisses  Katusha  under  the 

307 


3o8  Two  Russian  Reformers 

sanction  of  "  Christ  is  risen."  And  then,  when 
the  evil,  seemingly  inevitable,  thing  has  happened, 
Nekhludoff  asks  himself,  just  as  any  one  of  those 
earlier  impersonations  of  Tolstoy  would  have 
asked  himself — "  What  was  the  meaning  of  it 
all  ?  Was  it  a  great  joy,  or  a  great  misfortune, 
that  had  befallen  him  ?  "  and  he  adds  that 
perennial  generality  of  optimistic  youth  :  "It 
happens  to  everybody — everybody  does  it." 

So  the  young  officer  goes  off  to  join  his  regiment, 
and  though  he  does  not  as  yet  realise  the  evil  that 
he  has  done  so  carelessly,  the  glamour  of  passion 
perishes  almost  at  once.  From  War  also  every 
nuance  of  glamour  is  very  soon  stripped.  Nekh- 
ludoff had  joined  the  army  just  as  war  had  been 
declared  against  the  Turks,  and  he  plunged 
immediately  into  those  youthful  excesses  which 
Tolstoy  had  always  condemned  even  while  he  took 
part  in  them.  Now,  there  is  no  question  of  pallia- 
tion :  "  This  kind  of  life  acts  on  military  men 
even  more  depravingly  than  on  others,  because 
if  any  other  than  a  military  man  leads  such  a  life 
he  cannot  help  being  ashamed  of  it  in  the  depth 
of  his  heart.  A  military  man  is,  on  the  contrary, 
proud  of  a  life  of  this  kind,  especially  at  war  time, 
and  Nekhludoff  had  entered  the  army  just  after 
war  with  the  Turks  had  been  declared.  '  We 
are  prepared  to  sacrifice  our  life  at  the  wars,  and 
therefore  gay,  reckless  lives  are  not  only  pardon- 
able, but  absolutely  necessary  for  us,  and  so  we 


Tolstoy  309 

lead  them.'  Such  were  Nekhludoff's  confused 
thoughts  at  this  period  of  his  existence,  and  he 
felt  all  the  time  the  delight  of  being  free  of 
the  moral  barriers  he  had  formed}^  set  himself. 
And  the  state  he  lived  in  was  that  of  a  chronic 
mania   of  selfishness." 

This  mania  of  selfishness  robs  every  phase  of 
existence  of  all  youthful  illusion.  Nekhludoff 
approaches  his  duties  as  a  landlord  without  a 
spark  of  that  enthusiasm  for  humanity  which  is 
the  essence  of  Tolstoy's  faith.  And  afterwards, 
when  confronted  by  the  idea  of  domesticity,  he 
weighs  the  for  and  against  of  a  marriage  with 
"  Missy  "  without  a  gleam  of  Levin's  naive  exalta- 
tion. The  whole  theory  of  marriage  is  summed 
up  from  the  purely  pagan  standpoint  of  the 
Christian  man  of  the  world  :  "In  favour  of 
marriage  in  general,  besides  the  comforts  of 
hearth  and  home,  was  that  it  made  a  moral  life 
possible,  and  chiefly  that  a  family  would,  so 
thought  Nekhludoff,  give  him  an  aim  to  his  now 
empty  life.  Against  marriage  in  general  was  the 
fear,  common  to  bachelors  past  their  first  youth, 
of  losing  freedom,  and  an  unconscious  awe  before 
that  mysterious  creature,  a  woman." 

Youth  and  passion,  war  and  glory,  landlordism 
and  justice,  domesticity  and  comfort,  Tolstoy  has 
in  "  Resurrection  "  stamped  his  renunciation  of 
them  all.  But  as  Nekhludoff  takes  his  place  on 
that  jury,  before  which  his  own  conscience  is  on 


310  Two  Russian  Reformers 

trial,  we  are  forced  into  recognition  of  profounder 
depths  of  human  consciousness  than  have  ever 
been  probed  by  any  of  the  earher  impersonations 
of  Count  Tolstoy,  each  one  of  whom  had  snatched 
thankfully  from  the  confusion  of  all  human  affairs 
some  meaning  of  life,  however  insignificant.  All 
certitudes  slip  away  from  Nekhliidoff  as  he  sees 
in  the  dock  that  same  Katusha,  the  former 
protegee  of  his  aunt  whose  life  he  had  played 
hideously  with  that  Easter,  after  she  had  kissed 
him  in  the  name  of  "  Christ."  He  is  one  of  her 
judges  now,  one  of  the  representatives  of  that 
Society  which,  in  order  to  protect  itself,  must  crush 
out  the  victims  that  it  has  made  dangerous. 

The   former   guardsman   listens   to   the   sordid 
story    which    impUcates    the    pretty,    harmless 
Katusha  of  years  ago  in  a  murder  in  a  brothel. 
There  is  no  sensationalism  in  the  scene  of  recog- 
nition, no  theatrical  denunciation  from  the  dock, 
no  fugitive  spasm  of  the  romancer's  remorse,  no 
exploitation  of  atonement  in  the  betrayer's  heart. 
But   from   that   instant   in   which   he   recognises 
Maslova,   Nekhludoff  begins  dimly   to  recognise 
himself.     Slowly,  dully,  he  begins  to  detect  the 
crude  falsity  of  that  arranged  comedy  which  is 
called  honourable  life.     It  is  no  longer  for  liim  a 
question  of  settling  down  in  comfortable  domesti- 
cit}^  to  hand  on  strong  protected  children,  who  in 
their  turn  will  piously  arrange  the  burden  of  life 
so  that  it  falls  always  upon  the  shoulders  of  the 


Tolstoy  311 

weak.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  the  retired 
officer  becoming  the  good  squire  who  does  his 
orderly  best  for  the  dependants  who  feed  him. 
The  ideal  can  be  no  longer  the  apotheosis  of  the 
good  simple  man  who  acts  faithfully  according  to 
the  light  that  is  in  him.  Nekhludoff  realises  that 
it  is  necessary  to  understand,  that  the  safe  com- 
fort of  ignorance  can  be  his  no  longer.  In  spite 
of  all  the  traditions  of  comfortable  goodness,  he 
begins  to  grasp  something  of  that  under-world 
of  injustice  which  keeps  the  earth  clean  and 
wholesome  for  the  just.  He  himself,  in  this  one 
particular  instance,  had  cast  a  young  life  into 
this  under-world,  and  somehow  or  other  he  must 
redeem  it.  And  in  redeeming  it  he  must  also 
somehow  or  other  redeem  himself. 

Never  has  Tolstoy  been  more  faithful  in  his 
interpretation  of  the  slow,  often  contradictory, 
always  illogical,  workings  of  human  consciousness. 
There  are  no  sudden  transformations  here,  no 
facile  confessions,  no  pathetic  pardons  easily 
granted.  XaXeTra  ra  KaXd  :  the  Greek  phrase  re- 
peats itself  in  this  narrative  of  the  evolution  of 
two  souls.  Slow  and  tortuous  and  difficult  as  the 
road  to  Siberia  itself  is  the  full  self-realisation  of 
this  man  of  the  world  who  has  been  forced  to 
read  his  own  soul.  Equally  slow,  tortuous  and 
difficult  is  the  self-realisation  of  that  broken 
plaything  of  Society,  upon  which  Society  has 
passed   judgment.     The   ex-guardsman    and   the 


312  Two  Russian  Reformers 

prostitute  are  on  a  common  footing  at  the  lowly 
beginning  of  wisdom.  Both  of  them  are  learning 
the  ultimate  lesson  of  life,  the  lesson  that  never 
changes,  the  lesson  that  Count  Tolstoy  was 
groping  after  when  he  framed  those  rules  of 
conduct  in  the  old  nursery  days. 

It  is  a  hard  lesson  at  which  Tolstoy  arrives  in 
this  Via  Dolorosa  of  atonement  whose  Gethsemane 
is  Siberia.  Never  was  his  treatment  more  remorse- 
less and  more  faithful.  With  him  confession 
and  atonement  come  with  difficulty,  and  without 
that  sudden  rapture  of  abasement  which  is  so 
conspicuous  in  the  works  of  Dostoievsky.  There 
is  nothing  in  "  Resurrection  "  comparable,  for 
instance,  with  that  scene  in  **  Crime  and  Punish- 
ment "  in  which  the  stainless  unfortunate  pleads 
to  the  murderer  to  save  his  soul  through  the 
punishment  of  his  body.  For  Tolstoy's  characters, 
like  Turgenev's,  are  for  the  most  part  strangers 
to  the  sudden  aberrations  of  Dostoievsky's  heroes. 
He  has  depicted,  indeed,  very  few  of  those  exas- 
perated people  upon  whose  revolts  against  con- 
ventionality modern  Russian  writers  dwell  so 
constantly  :  "La  plupart,"  writes  M.  de  Vogiie, 
"  de  ces  natures  peuvent  se  ramener  a  un  type 
commun ;  I'exces  d'impulsion  Votchaianie,  cet 
etat  de  coeur  et  d'esprit  pour  lequel  je  m'efforce 
vainement  de  trouver  un  equivalent  dans  notre 
langue."  In  the  analysis  of  Dostoievsky  himself, 
**  This  is  the  sensation  of  a  man  who,  from  the 


Tolstoy  313 

summit  of  a  high  tower,  leans  over  the  yawning 
abyss  and  experiences  a  shudder  of  pleasure  at  the 
idea  that  he  may  hurl  himself  from  it  headlong. 
*  Faster,  and  let  us  end  it  !  '  he  says  to  himself. 
Sometimes  the  people  who  think  like  this  are  very 
peaceable,  very  ordinary  individuals.  .  .  .  The 
man  finds  a  delight  in  the  horror  that  he  inspires 
in  others.  .  .  .  He  strains  his  whole  soul  in 
frantic  hopelessness,  and  in  his  desperation  calls 
out  for  punishment  as  a  solution,  as  something 
which  will  decide  for  him."  In  all  Russian 
fiction  one  meets  with  the  recognition  of  this 
type,  which  is  the  very  antithesis  of  the  logically 
evolved  character  of  French  novelists  or  our  own 
conventionalised  and  graduated  heroes.  It  is 
the  natural  result  of  that  lack  of  crystallisation  in 
the  Russian  character  to  which  Turgenev  referred 
at  the  Parisian  restaurant.  Both  he  and  Tolstoy 
understood  this  indefinable  national  attribute, 
experienced  it  even  to  a  certain  extent,  undoubt- 
edly sympathised  with  it,  but,  unlike  Dostoievsky, 
allowed  it  but  little  influence  in  their  art.  And 
for  this  reason  they,  unlike  Dostoievsky,  appealed 
to  Europe  hardly  less  than  to  their  own  people. 
The  lesson  of  "  Resurrection,"  then,  is  for  the 
world  which  listens  to  so  very  few  living  voices. 
And  such  world-voices  as  there  are  either  resume 
falteringly  the  old  paean  of  the  pride  of  life,  or 
else  mockingly  challenge,  as  Turgenev  himself 
had  mournfully  challenged,   the  wisdom  of  the 


314  Two  Russian  Reformers 

whole  scheme  of  things.  Is  there  any  nepenthe 
whatsoever  for  the  stricken  race  of  mortals,  or 
must  it  dwindle  and  die,  commented  on  by  Alpine 
momitains,  as  Turgenev  had  made  it  dwindle  and 
die  ?  One  turns  to  him  who  has  added  to  the  sad 
gaiety  of  modern  Paris  the  very  irony  of  Virgil's 
large  sense  of  destiny.  Anatole  France,  almost 
alone  in  Europe,  in  spite  of  his  gibes  and  scoffs 
and  every  other  phase  of  Gallic  effrontery,  writes 
with  the  old  Greek  feeling  of  'AvdyKyj,  that  sense  of 
something  impenetrable  and  implacable  hovering 
beyond  the  little  radius  of  human  lives,  a  necessity 
making  weak  and  puerile  the  satisfied  gestures  of 
gods  and  kings.  And  writing  under  this  sense  by 
which  all  the  great  Russian  writers  seem  to  have 
been  obsessed,  Anatole  France  knows  well  that 
there  is  no  answer  to  the  repeated  questions  of 
the  generations  of  man.  In  that  book,  in  which, 
like  another  Gulliver,  he  has  weighed  the  little 
claims  to  happiness  of  poor  mankind,  he  has 
shown  only  too  clearly  that  he  is  the  dupe  of  no 
formula,  no  creed,  no  faith,  no  hope.  For  the  old 
follies  repeat  themselves,  and  tyranny  changes 
only  its  masks  :  "  Puis,  au  cours  des  ages,  les 
villages  remplis  de  biens,  les  champs  lourds  de  ble 
furent  pilles,  ravages  par  des  envahisseurs  bar- 
bares.  Le  pays  changea  plusieurs  fois  de  maitres. 
Les  conquerants  eleverent  des  chateaux  sur  les 
collines ;  les  cultures  se  multiplierent ;  des  mou- 
lins,  des  forges,  des  tanneries,  des  tissages  s'eta- 


Tolstoy  315 

blirent ;  des  routes  s'ouvrirent  a  travers  les  bois  et 
les  marais  ;    le  fleuve  se  courit  de  bateaux.     Les 
villages  devinrent  de  gros  bourgs  et,  reunis  les 
uns  aux  autres,  formerent  une  ville  qui  se  protegea 
par  des  fosses  profondes  et  de  hautes  murailles. 
Plus  tard,  capitale  d'un  grand  etat,  elle  se  trouva 
a  I'etroit   dans  ses  remparts   desormais    inutiles 
et    dont    elle    fit    de  vertes   promenades.      Elle 
s'enrichit  et  s'accrut  demesurement ;  on  ne  trouvait 
jamais    les   maisons   assez    hautes;    on   les   sur- 
elevait  sans  cesse,  et  Ton  en  construisait  de  trente 
a  quarante  etages,  ou  se  superposaient  bureaux, 
magasins,  comptoirs  de  banques,  sieges  de  societes, 
et  Ton  creusait  dans  le  sol  toujours  plus  profonde- 
ment  des  caves  et  des  tunnels.     Quinze  millions 
d'hommes    travaillaient    dans    la    ville   geante." 
That  seems  to  the  author  of  "  LTle  des  Pingouins  " 
the  fate  of  mankind  ;  but  the  idea  of  Nietzsche's 
Superman  has  not  wholly  faded  into  this  mocking 
acquiescence    in   the   meaninglessness   of   human 
destiny,  as  though  life  were  indeed  symbolised  by 
the  empty  sockets  of  the  Egyptian  Sphinx. 

Gabriel  d'Annunzio  at  least  reminds  our  genera- 
tion of  the  old  pride  of  existence,  of  a  conception 
of  life  irradiated  by  the  flame  of  genius.  He 
who  has  celebrated  the  triumph  of  life  as  well  as 
the  triumph  of  death  has  given  us  in  Lucio  Settala 
a  living  contrast  to  those  stricken  Hamlets  of 
Russian  literature.  It  is  a  conception  of  life 
wholly  pagan,  a  conception  of  life  which  presents 


3i6  Two  Russian  Reformers 

the  sculptor  pleading  for  art  in  modern  Italy  as 
Pericles  might  have  pleaded  for  it  in  ancient 
Athens.  Lucio  sees  in  Gioconda  Dianti  his  salva- 
tion through  art  :  "  Te  1'  ho  detto  !  mille  statue, 
non  una.  La  sua  bellezza  vive  in  tutti  i  marmi. 
Questo  sentii,  con  un'  ansieta  fatta  di  rammarico 
e  di  fervore,  un  giorno  a  Carrera,  mentre  ella 
m'  era  accanto  e  guardavamo  discendere  dall'  alpe 
quel  grandi  buoi  aggiogati  che  trascinano  giu  le 
carra  dei  marmi.  Un  aspetto  della  sua  perfezione 
era  chiuso  per  me  in  ciascuno  di  quei  massi 
informi."  And  when  Cosimo  Dalbo  reminds  him 
that  this  woman  thought  of  keeping  the  clay 
moist  at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  djdng, 
Lucio  Setalla  replies  by  asking  if  that  was  not  also 
a  way  of  fighting  death,  and  in  itself  an  admirable 
act  of  faith  !  The  sculptor's  wife  had  preserved 
his  life,  but  Gioconda  Dianti  had  preserved  his  art, 
which  for  him  at  least  was  the  meaning  of  life. 

But  she  herself  is  not  at  all  the  self-governing 
inspiration  of  life  through  art.  She  is  not  the 
terrible  implacable  one,  but  rather  a  puppet  like  all 
the  others,  struggling  blindly  in  invisible  meshes. 
She  acknowledges  as  much  to  her  rival,  who  fears 
her  :  "  Non  v'  e  nulla  d'  implacabile  in  lei ;  ma 
ella  stessa  obbedise  a  una  potenza  che  pud  essere 
implacabile."  So  the  old  'KvayKt)  weighs  upon 
the  individual  as  well  as  upon  the  race.  Not  even 
Gioconda  can  escape  from  that  nebula  of  destiny 
pervading  the  dim  centuries,  even  as  that  cloud  of 


Tolstoy  317 

reddish  dust  which,  in  "La  Citta  Morta,"  pene- 
trates the  blood  of  those  who  search  for  the  sin- 
laden  relics  of  the  Atrides. 

And  to  turn  from  this  fashioner  of  Titans 
crushed  by  their  own  strength  to  that  great 
writer  of  our  own  race  who  perhaps  most  of  all 
is  burdened  by  the  ever-present  sense  of  necessity 
— what  has  he  to  say  of  the  theory  of  justice  in 
that  profound  study,  "A  Pure  Woman  faithfully 
presented  by  Thomas  Hardy"?  "Sorrow,"  ex- 
claims the  sorrow-stricken  girl-mother,  "I  baptise 
thee  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son, 
and  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  "  Sorrow "  escaped, 
and  after  many  wanderings  Justice  sent  the 
mother  to  join  her  child  :  "  Justice  was  done, 
and  the  President  of  the  Immortals  (in  iEschylean 
phrase)  had  ended  his  sport  with  Tess.  And  the 
D'Urberville  knights  slept  on  in  their  tombs 
unknowing.  The  two  speechless  gazers  bent  them- 
selves down  to  the  earth  as  if  in  prayer,  and 
remained  thus  a  long  time,  absolutely  motionless  ; 
the  flag  continued  to  wave  silently.  As  soon  as 
they  had  strength  they  arose,  joined  hands  again, 
and  went  on." 

Such  are  the  voices  that  vibrate  through  the 
Europe  of  to-day.  On  the  one  hand  nothing  is 
predicted  except  the  enslavement  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  human  race  by  a  handful  of  tyrants, 
who  are  themselves  driven  puppets  consumed 
by    a   meaningless   passion   for   power.     On   the 


3i8  Two  Russian  Reformers 

other  side  there  is  nothing  beyond  the  self-con- 
suming passion  of  the  individual,  demanding  from 
art  a  deliverance  from  life.  From  either  point  of 
view  there  is  nothing  beyond  the  saddest  pessimism, 
reasoned  on  the  one  side,  temperamental  and 
instinctive  on  the  other.  Lucio  Settala  claiming 
with  the  pride  of  art  the  flame-woman  to  inspire 
his  genius,  and  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  seeking 
humbly  for  a  little  meed  of  happiness,  are  travelling 
the  same  universal  road.  It  is  the  sombre  road  of 
mankind  as  it  appears  to  the  fashioner  of  the  law- 
making Penguins.  In  answer  to  this  all-pervading 
doubt  of  any  ultimate  justice  scarcely  a  voice 
is  heard  that  claims  for  mankind  anything  at 
all  beyond  a  problematical  amelioration  of  its 
material  ills. 

But  in  the  midst  of  this  bloodless  apathy  of  the 
soul  by  which  even  our  few  writers  of  genius  are 
permeated  there  is  one  man  who  believes.  The 
voice  of  Tolstoy  vibrates  with  the  very  genius  of 
belief.  He  at  least  has  searched  for  and  faced  his 
own  soul.  For  while  on  all  sides  people  have 
been  clamouring  for  this  or  that  panacea  to  save 
them  from  a  knowledge  of  themselves,  Tolstoy  has 
continued  to  repeat  that  fearless  Greek  challenge 
yvoiOi  aeavTov.  Amid  the  crumbling  up  of  old 
faiths  and  old  ambitions  this  one  man  has  pre- 
served the  ideal  of  examining  the  soul  and  seeing 
in  its  life  an  explanation  which  can  alone  give  any 
meaning  to  that  material  existence  which  has  left 


I 


Tolstoy  319 

nothing  but  ashes  on  the  lips  of  the  sybarites  of 
art  and  the  apostles  of  progress,  on  the  lips  even 
of  the  new  Fausts,  the  new  emancipators,  the  new 
humanitarians. 

Alone  in  that  remote  country  house  the  aged 
and  revered  figure  lingers,  a  challenge  in  his  own 
person  alike  to  the  tyrants  of  Russian  orthodoxy 
and  to  the  tyrants  of  the  world's  materialism. 
He  wlio  has  stripped  from  himself  all  claims  to 
praise  or  homage  or  fame,  who  has  turned  his 
back  upon  the  allurements  of  science  and  art, 
remains  still  the  central  figure  to  whom  all  listen, 
however  they  may  shirk  following  him.  Experi- 
ence of  life  and  the  knowledge  of  its  fugitive 
littleness  is  stamped  upon  that  seamed  face, 
from  which  the  very  curiosity  in  regard  to  the 
approaching  end  has  been  burnt  out.  He,  alone 
in  the  whirlpool  of  exultant  modern  progress, 
stands  aside  claiming  for  himself  nothing  except 
the  right  of  speaking  what  he  believes  to  be  the 
truth.  Like  a  veritable  Faust,  of  moral  as  opposed 
to  intellectual  experience,  he  receives  the  students 
who  one  after  the  other  throng  to  him  with  the 
eternal  questions  upon  their  lips. 

But  he  has  remained  a  man  amongst  men,  as 
P.  A.  Sergyeenko  notes  in  his  description  of  a 
dispute  between  the  reformer  and  one  of  these 
students.  It  is  the  same  Tolstoy,  and  in  that 
moment  of  animation  the  imaginary  abyss  between 
the  reformer  and  the  artist  vanishes  into  smoke. 


320  Two  Russian  Reformers 

"  I  looked  at  Lyeff  Nikolaevitch,"  writes  M. 
Sergyeenko,  "  and  I  seemed  to  see  spread  out 
before  me  those  stormy  scenes  in  Nekrasoff's 
lodgings,  which  took  place  in  the  50's,  when 
young,  impetuous  Count  L.  Tolstoy,  presenting 
a  living  embodiment  of  Tchatsky  (the  hero  of 
Griboydeff' s  famous  comedy,  '  The  Misfortune  of 
Wit '),  played  in  St.  Petersburg  literary  circles 
the  part  of  Gadfly,  and  in  the  harshest  form 
expressed  his  protests  against  everything  which 
seemed  to  him  conventional  and  false."  ''  You 
cannot  imagine  what  scenes  these  were,'  relates 
D.  B.  Grigororitch.  "'Oh,  Heavens!'  Turgeneff 
would  squeak  and  squeak,  clutch  his  throat  with 
his  hand,  and,  with  the  eyes  of  a  dying  gazelle, 
would  whisper,  *  I  can  endure  no  more.  I  have 
bronchitis.'  " 

"  Bronchitis,"  Tolstoy  would  growl  out  im- 
mediately, "  bronchitis  is  an  imaginary  malady — 
bronchitis  is  a  mental !  ' '  Nekrasoff  in  the  interests 
of  the  Contemporary,  of  which  he  was  editor, 
naturally  did  his  best  to  conciliate  his  two  most 
famous  contributors.  It  was  no  easy  task : 
"  Tolstoy  is  lying  in  the  middle  of  the  room  which 
serves  as  corridor,  on  a  morocco-covered  divan, 
and  sulking,  while  Turgeneff,  parting  the  skirts  of 
his  short  pea-jacket,  with  hands  thrust  into  his 
pockets,  continues  to  stride  back  and  forth  through 
all  three  rooms.  With  the  object  of  averting  a 
catastrophe,  D.  Grigororitch  approaches  Tolstoy. 


Tolstoy  321 

*  My  dear  Tolstoy,  do  not  be  vexed.  You  do  not 
know  how  he  values  and  loves  you.'  '  I  will  not 
permit  him  to  do  an^^thing  to  harm  me,'  says 
Tolstoy,  with  swelling  nostrils.  *  Here  he  is 
marching  to  and  fro  past  me  and  wagging  his 
democratic   haunches.'  " 

And  as  M.  Sergyeenko  looks  on  at  the  aged 
Tolstoy  disputing  with  the  eager  student,  he  sees 
before  him  again  an  angry  young  man  sulking  on 
a  morocco-covered  divan,  and  furiously  contra- 
dicting any  expression  of  opinion  with  which 
at  the  moment  he  happens  to  disagree.  It  is 
a  small  picture,  perhaps,  of  a  great  man,  but  it 
illustrates  admirably  the  great  central  fact  of 
Tolstoy's  old  age,  the  fact  that  he  has  preserved 
in  all  its  freshness  his  youthful  interest  in  men 
and  things.  In  old  age  as  in  youth  he  clings  to 
illusions  and  resists  passionately  those  who  would 
dispel  them.  The  greatest  of  these  illusions  is  that 
he,  the  creator  of  masterpieces,  has  long  ago  aban- 
doned art.  He,  from  whose  splendid  brain  so  many 
living  beings  have  sprung  into  life,  would  make 
a  holocaust  of  many  of  his  best  creations.  But 
he  would  be  wrong  to  do  so,  wrong  from  the 
standpoint  of  his  own  moral  earnestness,  wrong 
from  the  standpoint  of  his  belief  in  the  love  of 
one's  fellow-beings  as  the  one  atonement. 

For,  the  structure  of  this  incongruous  but 
compelling  moral  force  is  of  normal  growth  and 
development.     It  has  risen  like  a  cone,  broad  at 

20 


322  Two  Russian  Reformers 

the  base  and  narrowing  gradually  to  its  isolated 
summit.  But  its  foundation  was  laid  upon  the 
generous  lines  of  the  great  central  truths,  and  in 
that  very  nursery  of  young  Irteniev,  amid  all 
those  conflicting  sensations  and  purblind  scram- 
blings  after  the  joy  of  life,  the  gradual  pressing 
upward  had  most  surely  commenced.  And  this 
process  of  growth  on  the  part  of  Irteniev,  Olenine, 
and  the  others,  was  at  no  time  concerned  with 
the  acquisition  of  material  welfare,  nor  even  with 
that  of  mental  or  artistic  power.  To  Tolstoy 
the  idea  of  simplification  came  as  naturally  as  the 
ideal  of  complexity  to  others.  To  this  magnificent 
intelligence  it  seemed  natural  from  the  very  first 
to  attach  oneself  to  the  mass  of  one's  fellow-beings, 
just  as  it  seems  to  many  noisy  little  Titans  of  to- 
day natural  to  detach  themselves  from  the  mass 
and  to  become  supermen,  arrogantly  trampling 
down  the  very  sustenance  of  their  full-gorged  life. 
Irteniev,  with  all  his  boyish  egotism,  realises  the 
larger  family  beyond  his  nursery.  Olenine,  sated 
with  the  sophisticated  vices  of  the  city,  seeks  in 
the  Pan-like  sagacity  of  Uncle  Eroshka  a  sim- 
plicity of  existence  that  seems  to  him  at  least 
more  natural  than  the  convoluted  perplexities 
of  civilisation.  The  hero  of  the  "  Sebastopol 
Sketches  "  realises  that  the  heart  of  an  army  is 
to  be  found,  not  among  the  generals  and  staff 
officers,  but  in  the  ranks.  Pierre,  in  "  War  and 
Peace,"  was  to  advance  still  further  on  the  road 


Tolstoy  323 

of  simplicity,  and  from  all  that  vast  canvas  was 
to  choose  as  his  instructor  Platon,  the  common 
soldier.  Again,  Levin  in  **  Anna  Karanina,"  still 
more  simplified,  was  to  learn  his  final  lesson  of 
life  from  the  lips  of  a  Russian  moujik,  who  was 
simpler  even  than  Platon.  Domesticity,  with  its 
daily  round  of  joys  and  cares,  had  long  been 
accepted  by  Count  Tolstoy  as  a  gracious  substitute 
for  all  the  larger  excitements  of  either  war  or 
peace.  An  orderly,  well-conducted  routine  of 
living,  implying  as  it  did  strict  attention  to  the 
education  and  general  amelioration  of  the  peasants, 
had  seemed  for  a  long  time  a  safe  simplification 
of  all  the  complexities  of  life.  It  was  the  goal 
of  Prince  Dimitri  Nekhliudov  in  **  The  Squire's 
Morning,"  and  it  remained,  approximately, 
the  point  of  view  of  Levin.  But  from  this 
stage  too  Tolstoy  was  slowly  to  escape — up- 
wards, towards  that  unguessed-at  summit  of  the 
cone. 

He  was  to  examine  life  under  the  microscope 
as  no  artist  perhaps  had  ever  examined  it  before. 
He  was  to  reproduce  the  illusion  of  a  whole  life- 
time from  the  infinitely  close  observation  of  its 
last  few  days.  He  was  to  do  this  with  such  in- 
tensity that  one  realises  the  movement  of  death 
already  in  progress  long  before  the  last  breath. 
The  study  of  Ivan  Ilyitch  is  not  the  study  of  one 
dying  man,  but  the  study  of  human  consciousness 
approaching  its  final  flicker.     Life  and  death  are 


324  Two  Russian  Reformers 

here  integral  portions  of  one  and  the  same  process. 
The  Ufe  of  man  is  weighed  in  the  balance  in  an 
inner  and  an  external  sense,  and  found  wanting. 
Tolstoy's  study  of  Professor  Metchnikoff's  dying 
brother  is  the  last  word  on  the  analysis  of  death 
as  it  concerns  the  individual. 

But  he  was  to  go  yet  further  in  his  profound 
examination  of  the  whole  scheme  of  things  as 
viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  Ivan  Ilyitch  and 
all  other  ordinary  men  of  the  world.  That  study 
was  finished  in  1886,  and  four  years  later,  in  an 
equally  powerful  study  of  even  more  general  scope, 
Tolstoy  approached  once  more  the  old  question  of 
whether  life  without  spiritual  insight  is  or  is  not 
tolerable  upon  this  earth.  In  the  earlier  book  he 
had  as  it  were  condemned  to  death  the  individual 
who  sought  for  the  goal  of  all  things  in  the  imme- 
diate pleasures  of  the  senses.  In  the  "  Kreutzer 
Sonata"  he  was  as  it  were  to  condemn  to  death 
the  whole  race  of  man  rather  than  see  it  prolonged 
under  such  easily  discoverable  bondage.  If  man 
cannot  survive  in  any  nobler  atmosphere  than 
this,  he  warns  us,  let  him  at  least  avoid  handing 
on  to  succeeding  generations  any  further  acts  of 
the  revolting  comedy. 

Both  of  these  books  are  filled  with  the  sombre 
lesson  of  the  denial  of  life;  but  in  "  Resurrection  " 
Tolstoy,  with  all  his  old  vitality  and  power,  was 
to  utter  a  message  of  hope  and  life.  The  essence 
of  this  final  book  of  experience  is  atonement,  but 


Tolstoy  325 

Nekhludoff  does  not  leap  into  any  sudden  trans- 
formation any  more   than   Tolstoy  himself  had 
done.     Animalism  falls   away   from  him  slowly, 
but  from  that  first  moment  of  recognition  of  his 
fellow-sinner   in   the   dock,   the   old   comfortable 
ignorance   had   disappeared.     And   what   is   true 
for  him  is  true   for   every  human  being  on  the 
earth  :    "  And  just  as  on  this  northern  summer 
night  there  was  no  restful  darkness  on  the  earth, 
but   only   a   dismal   dull   light   coming   from   an 
invisible  source,  so  in  Nekhludoff' s  soul  there  was 
no  longer  the  restful  darkness,  ignorance.     Every- 
thing seemed  clear.     It  was  clear  that  everything 
considered  important  and  good  was  insignificant 
and  repulsive,  and  that  all  glamour  and  luxury 
hid   the  old  well-known  crimes  which   not   only 
remained  unpunished  but  were  adorned  with  all 
splendour  which  men  were  capable  of  inventing." 
Slowly  Nekhludoff  groped  on  in  the  increasing 
light  until  he  arrived  at  the  idea  of  the  ultimate 
surrender — that  he  must  not  only  renounce  the 
pleasures  of  youth,  but  the  eclat  of  an  officer,  the 
satisfaction  of  a  good  and  just  landlord,  the  dignity 
of  a  contented  head  of  a  family,   but,   having 
stripped  himself  of  all  these  things,  that  he  must 
claim  from  the  very  dregs  of  Society  the  woman 
whom  he  and  no  other  had  hounded  into  the  under- 
world.    And  so  he  follows   Maslova   to  Siberia, 
not  as  a  hero  of  Dostoievsky  would  have  followed 
her,  that  is  to  say  passionately  grateful  for  being 


326  Two  Russian  Reformers 

permitted  to  share  her  suffering  at  last,  but  in  a 
quite  different  manner.  Nekhludoff  takes  each 
difficult  step  of  that  journey,  which  is  as  long 
morally  as  it  is  physically,  without  any  such 
exaltation,  and  with  his  eyes  wide  open.  He  is 
conscious  of  every  repellent  association;  no  step 
of  the  sombre  journey  leaves  him  unscarred.  But 
he  goes  on.  His  atonement  does  not  wear  itself 
out ;  he  will  pay  the  ultimate  price  in  deeds,  not 
in  words.  And  because  of  the  sincerity  of  his 
soul-struggle,  the  woman  herself  begins  gradually 
to  believe  in  something  beyond  that  comedy  of 
brutality  which  had  been  called  her  life.  Her 
outlook  widens  to  meet  the  contraction  of  his. 
In  this  poor  bruised  being  there  springs  up  the 
same  desire  for  sacrifice.  The  man  w^ho  has 
everything  thinks  only  of  giving  ;  she  who  has 
nothing  is  equally  desirous  to  give.  And  slowly, 
and  as  though  in  conscious  sympathy  with  the 
movements  of  Nature,  which  are  so  close  to  the 
moral  movements  of  the  human  soul,  these  two 
stricken  beings,  united  by  a  common  sense  of  sin, 
drag  themselves  wearily  into  the  sanctuary  of 
"  Resurrection." 

But  to  the  very  end  all  fine  phrases,  all  rhetorical 
outbursts  are  ruthlessly  suppressed  ;  never  were 
the  eyes  of  Tolstoy  turned  more  alertly  towards 
external  life.  Judges,  guards,  prisoners,  peasants, 
petitioners,  lawyers,  jurymen — one  sees  them  all 
filing  before  us,  in  this  terrible  comedy  of  punish- 


Tolstoy  327 

ment.  One  sees  the  reeking  prisons  as  though 
one  had  been  pushed  suddenly  behind  doors  that 
are  instantly  closed  again.  One  sees  the  horrible 
crowds  of  prisoners  wrangling  with  each  other, 
punishing  each  other  as  though  there  were  not 
enough  punishment  already  in  their  lives.  Nekh- 
liidoff  does  not  go  to  his  atonement  accompanied 
by  slow  music.  No  hint  of  romance  throws  its 
hectic  glamour  over  this  ugly  and  useless  suffering 
by  which  he  is  surrounded  on  all  sides.  Every- 
thing is  stamped  by  the  Russian  touch,  and  Nekh- 
ludoff  on  his  way  to  Siberia  mixes  easily  and 
naturally  with  the  peasants  in  the  railway  carriage, 
just  as  Tolstoy  himself  used  to  mix  with  them  when 
he  found  it  necessary  to  enter  a  train.  There  is, 
indeed,  no  consciousness  on  his  part  of  a  great 
surrender,  of  a  great  renunciation.  And  at  the 
very  end,  when  we  are  led  into  that  last  prison 
in  which  the  Englishman  distributes  Bibles  with 
all  the  matter-of-factness  of  a  district  visitor  at 
home,  Tolstoy  preserves  the  unimpassioned  atti- 
tude of  an  observer  of  mankind.  This  foreigner 
has  not  been  introduced  into  the  book  at  the  very 
end  in  order  to  "  convert  "  Nekhludoff  in  any 
sudden,  hysterical  sense.  He  is  not  at  all  an 
apostle,  but  a  quite  ordinary  Englishman,  who 
speaks  atrocious  French  very  confidently,  and 
whose  rosy  face  is  puffy  with  well-being.  He  has 
seen  the  cathedral  and  the  factory  in  this  desolate 
corner  of  Siberia,  now  he  would  like  to  visit  the 


328  Two  Russian  Reformers 

famous  transportation  prison  if  that,  too,  is  in 
order.  It  is  in  order,  and  the  EngUshman  starts 
out  with  Nekhludoff  to  see  what  is  to  be  seen. 
He  is  a  sight-seer  with  Bibles  in  his  pocket  for 
distribution,  a  good  man  according  to  his  light, 
but  one  from  whom  there  emanates  no  single 
spark  of  that  enthusiasm  which  engenders  faith. 
But  he  will  do  the  business  in  hand  practically 
after  the  English  fashion — so  many  bound  Testa- 
ments to  each  fetid  cell,  no  less,  no  more — a  set 
speech,  cut  and  dried  and  definite.  He  is  a  man 
whose  last  word,  before  Nekhludoff  turns  away  from 
him  without  saying  "  Good-bye,"  is  the  traditional 
"Oh."  None  the  less  it  is  this  man,  w^ho  through 
his  chance  gift  to  his  companion  of  a  New  Testa- 
ment, finishes  the  work  of  regeneration  which  had 
commenced  in  Nekhludoff's  heart  when  he  recog- 
nised Maslova  in  the  dock. 

That  is  the  manner  of  Tolstoy,  who  works 
always  without  sudden  surprises  and  without  pas- 
sionate appeals.  Nekhludoff  is  a  new  man  when 
he  has  returned  to  the  old  faith,  but  it  is  the  same 
Nekhludoff  who  has  run  the  full  gamut  of  the 
world's  passions  and  discords.  In  precisely  the 
same  sense  the  great  Count  Tolstoy  became  a  new 
man  when  he  returned  to  the  old  faith,  but  re- 
mained the  same  Tolstoy  who  had  loved,  none 
better,  the  honey  of  life.  The  cone  has  narrowed 
gradually  up  to  its  remote  summit,  but  its 
structure  is  essentially  one  and  the  same,  and 


Tolstoy  329 

the  Tolstoy  of  "  Resurrection "  is  essentially 
the  Tolstoy  of  "  Childhood,  Boyhood,  and 
Youth." 

CHRONOLOGICAL  RECORD 

1828.  Born  at  Yasnaya  Polyana. 

1843.  Entered  Kazan  University. 

1 85 1.  Enlisted  in  the  Artillery, 

1852.  Published    "Childhood,"    "A    Squire's    Morning,"    and 

"  The  Cossacks." 

1854.  Published  "Boyhood." 

1854-6.     Published    "Sketches  of  Sevastopol." 

1855.  Published  "  Youth." 

1857.     Visited    Europe.    Pubhshed    "Memoirs  of   Prince    Nek- 

liudofi." 
1862.     Married  Miss  Behrs. 
1864-9.     Published   "War  and  Peace." 

1869.  Published  "A  Prisoner  in  the  Caucasus." 

1870.  Visited  the  Bashkir  Steppes. 
1873-6.     Published   "Anna  Karanina." 
1879-82.     Published   "My  Confession." 
1884.     Published   "My  Religion." 

1886.  Published   "The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch." 

1887.  Published  "Life." 

1889.     Published  "  The  Kreutzer  Sonata." 
1898.     Published   "  WTiat  is  Art  ?  " 
1902.     Became  dangerously  ill  at  Yalta. 


THE   WORKS   OF    LEO    TOLSTOY 

Childhood,  Boyhood,  and  Youth.     The  Incursion. 
A  Landed  Proprietor.    The  Cossacks.     Sevastopol. 
A  Moscow  Acquaintance.     The  Snow  Storm.     Domestic  Happi- 
ness.    Miscellanies, 
Pedagogical  Articles,     Linen-Measurer. 
War  and  Peace, 
Anna  Karanina, 
Fables  for  Children.    The  Decembrists.    Moral  Tales. 


330  Two  Russian  Reformers 

My  Confession.     Dogmatic  Theology. 

The   Four  Gospels  Harmonized  and  Translated. 

My  Religion.  On  Life.  Thoughts  on  God.  On  the  Meaning 
of  Life. 

What  Shall  We  Do,  Then  ?      Miscellanies. 

Dramatic  Works. 

The  Kreutzer  Sonata.     The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch. 

Walk  in  the  Light  while  Ye  Have  Light. 

Thoughts  and  Aphorisms.     Letters.     Miscellanies. 

The  Kingdom  of  God  is  Within  You.  Christianity  and  Patriot- 
ism.   Miscellanies. 

Resurrection. 

What  is  Art  ?    The  Christian  Teaching. 

Miscellaneous  Letters  and  Essays. 

The  Slavery  of    Our  Time.     Miscellanies. 


Among  the  works  to  which  the  author  of  these 
biographical  sketches  is  indebted,  the  following 
should  be  especially  mentioned  : 

The  Complete  Works  of  Turgenev.     Translated  by  Constance 

Garnett  (Heinemann). 
"Ivan  Tourguenieff :     La  Vie   et   L'CEuvre."      Par  Emile 

Haumant  (Librairie  Armand  Colin). 
"  Souvenirs  sur  Tourgu6neff."     Par  Isaac  Pavlovsky  (Paris  : 

Nouvelle  Librairie  Parisienne). 
"  Tourgueneff  Inconnu."    Par  Michel  Delines.     (Paris  :  La 

Librairie  lUustree). 
"  Ivan  Tourgueneff ;   Lettres  a  Madame  Viardot."    Publiees 

et  annotees  par  E.  Halperine-Kaminsky  (Paris  :    Biblio- 

theque-Charpentier) . 
"  A  Literary  History  of  Russia."     By  A.  Briickner  (Fisher 

Unwin). 
"  A  History  of  Russian  Literature."      By  K.  Waliszewski 

(Heinemann). 
"  La    Pensee    Russe   Contemporaine."     Par    Ivan    Strannik 

(Paris:  Librairie  Armand  Colin). 


Tolstoy  331 

**  Le  Roman  Russe."    Par  Vicomte  E.  M.  de  Vogu6  (Paris: 

Librairie  Plon). 
"The  Complete  Works  of  Tolstoy"  (Dent). 
"  The  Life  of  Tolstoy — First  Fifty  Years."    By  Aylmer  Maude 

(Constable). 
"  Leo   Tolstoy,    His   Life   and   Work."     Compiled   by   Paul 

Birukoff  and  revised  by  Leo  Tolstoy  (Heinemann). 
"  Tolstoi   as    Man    and    Artist."     By    Dimitri    Merejkowski 

(Constable). 
"  How  Count  Tolstoy  Lives  and  Works."     By  P.  A.  Sergy- 

eenko  (Nisbet). 
"  Tolstoy  ;    His  Life,  Works  and  Doctrine."     By  Dr.  A.  S. 

Rappoport  (New  Age  Press). 
"  Life."     By  Count  Lyof  N.  Tolstoi  (Walter  Scott). 
"  Resurrection."     By  Count  Lyof  N.  Tolstoi  (Walter  Scott). 
"  My  Confession."     By  Count  Lyof  N.  Tolstoi  (Walter  Scott). 
"  Recollections."     By  C.  Behrs  (Heinemann). 


INDEX 


TURGENEV 


Agatha,  23,  24 

Aksakof,  Serge,  55 

Alpine  Mountains,  183 

"  Annals  of  a  Sportsman,"   14, 

20,    22,    40,    54,    120,     141, 

15s,  160,  173 
Assia,  26 
Atlantic,  43 

Baden-Baden,  68 
Bakounine,  46,  47 
Balzac,  104 
Barbourine,  26 
Bazaroff,  26,  86-7 
Berlin,  18,  40,  44,  46,  49,  55 
Bielinski,  48,  49,  54 
Black  Forest,  53 
Bougival,  188,  200 
Brie,  53 
Byron,  158 

Calderon,  50 
Carlyle,  158 
Claudie,  15 
Courtavenel,  53 
Crimean  War,  5  5 

Daudet,  Alphonse,  41,  56,  116 
"  David  Copperfield,"  41,  192 


"  Diary  of  a  Superfluous  Man," 

153,  164,  199,201 
Dickens,  41,  141,  192 
Dostoievsky,  54,  76,  7S.  155 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  57 

Edmond,  Charles,  103 
Eliot,  George,  45,  198 
England,  96,  158 
"Eyre,  Jane,"  18 

"  Fathers  and  Sons,"  26,  68, 

79,  86,  89 
Fetistka,  25,  26 
"Fire  at  Sea,"  184,  188 
"  First  Love,"  27,  30,  41 
Flaubert,  Gustavo,  69,  96,  100, 

no,  114,  162,  187 
France,  50,  56 
Frankfort,  41 

Garassim,  173 
Garcia,  Pauline,  49 
Gemma,  42 
Germany,  40 
Goethe,  47 
Goncourt,  179 
Gontcharof,  y^ 


Hegel,  38,  40 


332 


Index 


333 


Heine,  44 

Hugo,  Victor,  57,  141 

Insarov,    128,    129,    130,    132, 

Institut  Lazaref,  35,  36 
Irene,  48 
Italy,  40 

Jakovlef,  Nicolas,  22 

"  Journal  des  Goncourts,"  27 

"  Karanina,  Anna,"  55 

Karmazinoff,  76 

Kartacheff,  Porphyre,  18,24,  40, 

72 
Kondratatief,  Egor,  22 

Lamartine,  57 

"  L'Assomraoir,"  104 

Lavretski,  63,  64,  65,  66,  68 

Lear,  King,  78 

Levin,  63 

Lezhnyov,  58 

Liszt,  17 

Liza,  57,  63,  64,  65,  66,  67 

LoutovinofE,  16 

Lyons,  50 

Magny,  56 

Maupassant,  de,  215 

Mirabeau,  85 

Moscow,  17,  24,  35,  44,  49,  55 

Moscow,  University  of,  27 

Mumu,  172,  175,  176,  177 

Musset,  Alfred  de,  27 

Natalya,  59,  61,  66 
Nezhdanov,  81,  84,  94 
Nikolaevna,  Marie,  43,  48 

"  On  the  Eve,"  121,  127 
Orel,  13,  25 


Panshin,  65 

Pantaleone,  29 

Paris,  27,  43,  48,  62 

Pascal,  50 

Pavel,  26 

Pavlovsky,  29,  105 

Pecksniff,  58 

Petrof,  Ivan,  22 

Petrovna,  Varvara,  35,  54 

Phaedra,  33 

Pigasov,  62 

"  Piotr  Petrovitch  Karataev," 

149 
Poliakofi,  22,  23,  24 
Polinski,  47,  50.  73,216 
Polozoff,  29 
Polozov,  Ippolit,  43 
Pounine,  26 
Proven^ales,  50 
Pushkin,  102,  105,  115 

Rudin,  Dimitri,  46,  47,  55,  57, 
58,  59,  60,  61,  62.  63,  64, 
66.  67,  68 

Russia,  18,  41,  45,  48,  56,  61, 
63 

St.  Petersburg,  19,  23,39,  49,  55 

St.  Petersburg,  University,  38 

Sallis,  Comtesse  de,  87 

Salzbrunn,  49 

Sand,  George,  50,  57,  11 1 

Sannin,  41 ,  42,  43,  56,  64 

Sapho,  56 

Schiller,  47 

Schwartz,  Mile,  1 8 

Sebastopol,  55 

Siberia,  18,  54 

Silesia,  49 

Sipyagin,  80 

Skimpole,  Horace,  59 

Slavophil,  65 


334 


Index 


"Smoke/\46,  48,  56.  68,  201-13 

Sobaleff,  20 

Souvenirs,  50 

Spasskoe,    13,    14,    15,    16,    19, 

24,  26,  27,  31,  33,  35,  36,  56, 

70,  72,  157,  191 
Spasskoe-Celo,  25 
"  Spring  Tqrrents,"  90,  199 
Stettin,  49 
Switzerland,  27,  40 

Tartuffe,  58 

Temps,  The,  103 

Thackeray,  125,  158 

Tit  ant  a,  30 

Tolstoy,  26,  55,  63,  65,  75,  103 

"  Torrents  of  Spring,"  29,  30, 

41,  156 
Tourguenevo,  24 
Troubetzkoi,  Princess,  29 
Turgenev,  13,  15,  17,  18,  19,  21, 


23,   24,   25,   26.    27,   28,   29. 

30.  33.  35.  36,  37.  38.  39.  40. 

41,  42,  43,  44,  45,  46,  47,  48, 

49,  50.  54,  55,  56,  59,  61,  63. 

64,  65,  66,  67,  68 
Turgenev,  Elizabeth,  25 
Turgenev,  Madame,  16,   17,    18, 

19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24,  28 
Turgenev,   Nicolas,  \j ,   18,   19,. 

21,  22,  23,  24,  35 

United  States,  43 

Viardot,  Madame,   17,  26,  48, 
49,  50.  53.  68,69,  99,  no,  188 
Ville-d'Avray,  53 
"Virgin  Soil,"  79,  93 

Zagoskino,  35 

Zinaiaida,  30,  31,  32,  n,  34 

Zola,  Emile,  45,103-5,  142 


TOLSTOY 


"  A  Landed  Proprietor,"  282 
"Anna   Karanina,"   252,    255, 

269,  275,  281,  307 
"  A    Squire's    Morning,"    269, 

323. 

Bashkir,  271 
Behrs,  280,  285,  287 

Caucasus,  the,  266 

"  Caucasian  Prisoner,"  260 

"  Childhood,    Boyhood,"    224, 

329 
"  Cossacks,    The,"    243,    260, 

265,  282 
Crimean  War,  228,  270 


"  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch."  291, 
307 

K 

Kazan,  227 

"  Kreutzer  Sonata,"  270,  281, 
288,  291,  324 

"  Life,"  257 


Merezhkovsky,  221,  264,  287 
Moscow,  281 

"  My  Confession,"  293,  300 
"My   Husband    and   I,"    255, 
269,  291 


Index 


335 


"  Resurrection,  '  228,  271,  287, 
309,  312,  326 

"  Sebastopol    Sketches,"    267, 

268,  282 
Sergyeenko,  321 
Sodo,  261 

"The    Three     Deaths,"     284, 

291 
Tolstoy  : 

compared     with     Turgenev, 
258,  301 

introspection,  241 

labourer,  as,  285 


Tolstoy  (cont.) : 

love  for  Masha,  234 

marriage,  280 

pessimism,  232,  296 

realism,  237,  291 

religion,  247,  281,  283,  286, 

299,  318 
Sebastopol,  at,  263,  267 
soldier's  life,  262 

"War   and   Peace,"    280-281, 
284,  291 

Yasnaya    Polyana,    227,    271, 

274,  278 
"  Youth,"  228 


Printed  by  Hazell,  Watson  &  Viney,  Ld.,  London  and  Aylesbury. 


BY    THE    S.\.ME    AUTHOR 


THE  LADY  OF  KENSINGTON 
GARDENS 

Extracts  from  Reviews 

i 

Daily  Telegraph  : 

•'  Mr.  Lloyd  has  considerable  literary  skill." 

Sunday  Times  : 

•'-  The  book  is  well  worth  reading,  and  there  is 
little  doubt  that  we  shall  hear  more  of  so  able  a 
writer." 

T.P.'s  Weekly  : 

-■  A  novel  quite  out  of  the  ordinary  .  .  .  this 
remarkable  and  subtle  book." 

Manchester  Courier  : 

-'■  An  interesting  first  novel.  Not  only  is  it  well 
\\Titten,  but  it  reveals  a  strong  individual  talent  in 
a  province  not  usually  invaded  by  English  wTiters." 

Bystander  : 

-'Worked  out  in  a  very  pleasant,  mystical 
style  .  .  .  promising  for  Mr.  Lloyd's  future  work." 

Liverpool  Courier  : 

'•Mr.  Lloyd  reveals  capacity  of  an  unusual 
order.  Altogether  the  book  is  unusually  clever,  and 
we  look  forward  with  some  eagerness  to  ]\Ir.  Lloyd's 
future  work." 

J^rice  6s. 


A 
J. 


t'  1  -'  ;'.  ■: 


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